I do not own Dragon Age.
this was a prompt from wandering-lanterns on tumblr.
Also in this fic "~O~" indicates a perspective switch, just in case it isn't clear enough.
You don't remember much. There was a large explosion of some form, something that went off when the Inquisitor closed the final tear - your ears are still ringing. The side of your head smarts viciously, warm and throbbing and painful, and your vision is slightly blurred and layered, but you will be fine. As Sera yanks you to your feet, you shake it off as best you can. You have suffered worse.
She stands at the top of the hill, her back to you as you and the others make their way through the debris and the corpses scattered all around.
She staggers backwards as you call her name, and the agile rogue swoops in before you can and catches her, slowly easing her to the ground.
"You dumb tit, what'd you do now?" Sera says softly, her voice concerned and serious like you have never once heard from the blonde, and your blood runs cold.
You approach as quickly as you can and take a defensive stance with your back to Sera, your sword hefted at the ready should any malevolent entities near. You see someone - someone with a staff and billowing garment, Solas or Dorian or maybe Vivienne - approaching from far off.
Sera makes a strangled noise as her hands rove over the tiny mage's limp form. You repress the urge to growl in irritation - you know Sera is doing this not to be lewd but to assess the scenario - and grip your sword tighter, scanning the horizon. Nothing moves - no demons, no darkspawn, no Inquisition. Everything except you and Sera and the friendly approaching mage and the Inquisitor, everything is dead. So many have been lost, and so you refuse to believe that you will lose her too.
"Seeker," Sera says, and you know instantly things aren't going to be good. "She's hurt. Really bad."
Dread fills the archer's voice, and your stomach roils.
"She will be fine," you insist. You aren't sure if you believe it. "We need to get her back to the Keep. We can heal her there."
"Cass, don't be any more of an idiot," Sera says. "The Keep's hours away. We can't get her back there in time."
"She's not dying," you say, your voice hardening. "She will survive."
"Cass, you might want to..." Sera trails off, and you look over your shoulder to see the blonde rogue looking up at you with drooped ears and mournful eyes. She looks like an adult, a true, grieving, weary adult, and that terrifies you. Sera never acts her age, always choosing to run and play and argue and be wild. To see her so greyscale when she lives her life in color...it makes your skin crawl.
"I might want to what?" you ask, although you know what she is going to say.
"Just...I know she's special to you...so maybe you can watch her for a while? I'll take guard."
You don't argue.
You slip your sword back into its sheath on your back and Sera carefully eases her into your arms. She weighs nothing, and as her face is tilted up towards you, you can see flickering green-black flecks of the Fade in her half closed eyes. Her dazed vision, those peace green eyes that always watch and notice and learn and see, lock onto your eyes and suddenly she smiles.
"Hello there," she says weakly, her voice crackling. She curls in closer to you slightly, and her forehead creases in pain.
"Don't move," you say, "You are going to hurt yourself."
She exhales sharply, her smile growing, and you realize with horror that the sound was supposed to be a laugh. No, no, this is unacceptable, you have heard the elf laugh so many times before! She has laughed at herself trying to buy a beehive, she has laughed at you when you blush, she has laughed at everything. All of those laughs rang high and clear and bright. This little huff...no, this is not a laugh, you refuse to accept it.
"Da'len," she says, her lips shining with red. "Ma vhenan."
You don't know Dalish, not well, but it is clear from her tone how she intends them, and you feel as if someone with claws and an iron glove has just taken your chest and squeezed it tight. You cradle her closer, your throat constricting.
"You aren't dying," you grit out through your teeth. "Not while I breathe."
Her hand lifts towards your cheek, and you nearly flinch when it makes contact - her hands are freezing, icy cold like metal.
"It is alright," she says softly, looking up at you with dreamy, vacant eyes that almost hide the agony she is in.
They won't take her away from you. No. No, you've lost too much to these maker damned demons! You have lost so many you loved, you won't lose another.
"Vena ara mah'vir," she murmurs. "I did it, you know. I didn't think I would."
"Didn't think you would what?" you ask, smoothing back blood-matted orange hair from her beaten face as her hand drops back to her side. Your fingertips brush against something in her hair - a flower, a strand of woven stems. It is half dead and crackles at your touch, and you realize with a hard swallow that they are Andraste's Grace. She never deigned to wear a flower for Andrastian connotations, but you had given one to her in an imitation of her traditions - a flower, for luck.
She had worn it today.
Where was the luck? Why weren't you all back at the Keep, why wasn't Sera boasting about how she killed one more demon than Cassandra, why wasn't Solange sitting beside you with her head leaning against your shoulder and her fingers entwined with yours, why wasn't everything working?
"Vena ara mah'vir..."
She groans, a whimper through pursed lips, and your eyes burn with...something. Tears? Fury? You aren't sure.
"To find my tomorrow."
The pain suddenly vanishes from her face, and your heart stops and you clutch at her frantically before you see that she is still blinking dizzily, her eyes never leaving your face.
"What does that mean?" you ask, and you notice belatedly that your voice has become more gentle. Solange's eyes alight with eagerness.
"I found..." she pauses, pressing her lips together. She squeezes her eyes shut and her entire form trembles and she curls into you, her face against your chest as she shakes with pain. She doesn't make one sound, though, and you think maybe she is better at hiding things than you ever thought.
"I found my tomorrow," she sighs after a little bit. Her eyes flicker back open and land on you. This time it seems as if she's struggling to keep them open, and they keep drifting away. She always brings them back to you though, always returning. "You -"
She interrupts herself when her face contorts, her lips sliding over her teeth in a pained snarl as she cries out. It's a terrible sound, as bad as metal on glass, and you don't realize you're holding her closer and that tears are burning on your cheeks, until you are.
"No, no, please - stop talking. You are only hurting yourself!" you say. "Stop. People will be here soon, they will make sure you live."
Her head lolls to one side, then the other, and then she is shaking her head.
"No," she hums. "But you will live and so I am happy."
You feel your insides shudder horribly because no, this cannot be happening, you can't let this happen, you can do better, you have to, you have to save her -
"You know..."
Her lips tremble slightly before she continues, her hand shakily reaching up and her thumb grazing over your cheek to wipe a tear away.
"You know I love you, right?" she says softly. You nod, your throat closing, and you can feel the tears building behind your eyes even stronger. She smiles, taking a deep, preparatory breath.
"Good."
~O~
You sigh, the bow tight in your grip. You can hear murmurs from the Seeker and from the Inquisitor, and you know with that familiar knot of instinct weaving itself in your chest, that the latter's voice won't speak for much longer.
You never were good at consoling people. You never knew the right thing to say or do, because quite frankly you had never bothered to learn. You had always been the cause of grief or the one grieving - when other people mourned, you had skipped out as quickly as you could.
Now, though, you wish you'd figured it out at some point.
"...?" you hear Cassandra say, her voice lilting up into a wary question. "Solange?"
Everyone knew that the Inquisitor and the Seeker were involved. They'd have had to be blind and an idiot to overlook it - the little mage was always so enthusiastic and bright and Cassandra seemed drawn to it like a moth to flame. You had been too initially, but it was ultimately more enjoyable to see them together, with the Seeker actually smiling (you hadn't known it was possible) and Solange leaning onto her side with adoring eyes. And yet despite all of that, you had very rarely heard Cassandra use the Inquisitor's name. Everything was always professional, and it was only thanks to your stealth that you heard it at all.
Now you hear it this time, and you don't like it.
"Solange?" she says again, her voice tightening. You hear light shaking, fabric and armor rustling and clanking, and then the Seeker's voice gets louder.
"No, no, no, please no," she begs, and you want to cover your ears at the sound of such plaintiveness coming from the strong warrior. "Please, don't take her from me..."
You resist the urge to glance over your shoulder, and instead keep your bow trained on the horizon. There are more people moving now, coming towards you, but even the unidentified ally mage is so far away that they'd never reach you in time to do anything.
"Stop this," Cassandra exclaims, and your heart breaks, shatters. "They have already taken everything from me. Please...Maker, don't let them take you too."
You turn around - just for a second, you promise yourself - and you are automatically regretful.
You see Solange, of course. The poor girl's eyes are closed and she looks relatively peaceful and to be honest you're glad she can rest at ease because you've seen people die far worse without someone they love beside them, and that's something awful to go on into the afterlife with. But your main focus is Cassandra - Cassandra Pentaghast, the resident hardass of the Inquisition. She is tall and strong and brave and heroic, everything you know she always hoped to be. But not now. Not now.
Now she's nothing more than a little girl in too-big armor, her eyes wide and her cheeks streaming with tears. You can actually see it in her eyes that she's completely demolished, the heart you once thought was ice that had been thawed by Solange's sunshine completely broken into smithereens, and it twists your chest up in horrible tangles.
"They took Anthony," you hear her murmur as she clutches the prone form of Solange to her chest. "They took him away, and they took Byron away, and they took all these people. Why do they have to take you? Why you?"
Her voice is a keening whisper, and it's somewhat shattering for you to see the stable, hopeful Seeker reduced to such grief.
You can't look any more. With luck, maybe you can make this memory fade in a few years, maybe the blood and the crackling Fade and the demons and the look on the warrior's face will have blurred into the watercolor mass that is your memories now.
But Cassandra Pentaghast will see it forever, emblazoned like the damned Chantry seal inside her mind. It will lurk in her nightmares and tear at her heart and soul until nothing's left but tatters and shreds. In that, you don't envy her one bit.