His chest burned as each breath felt like agony when he woke, and he sputtered out yet another breath. A lightly decorated ceiling hung above him, the dragon-like imagery told the elf suffering on the bed that he remained in Tevinter. Another day of being alive in this godsforsaken place, he thought as he tried to twist himself into an upright position. Every movement became a new wave of fiery pain, and as he slowly forced himself through it, he realised that he wasn't alone in the room. Being upright allowed him to take in the dark red and yellow hues of nobility and sheer Tevinter-ness that he already hated.

The elf held his chest as he slowly stood up, dragging the blanket with him for a source of warmth. The slow, painful movement continued as he dragged himself to the window to try and see what the time of day it was. Below, the brown stone seemed to be beaten down by many nobles going to and fro, and it was much too light out to bother making any sort of escape attempt. A cage without bars or lock, it seemed.

Faelyn Lavellan, trapped in Tevinter, the elf thought to himself as he stood there by the window. The pain of standing slowly turned his vision red, and the realization took the little amount of strength he had been using to stand, and Faelyn began to fall. He felt an arm wrap around him and helped to slow his fall to the floor. At least his captor or rescuer -Faelyn wasn't sure yet, as last night had been a fag of panic and desperation- wasn't going to leave him to his own devices, but Faelyn could feel his chances at escape slip away even further as the strong arm held him up.

"Really? You grab me in the middle of the night by my ankle, whisper help and then expect to wander around the next day?" the voice sounded higher than Faelyn expected, and more joyful. It teased him, as if to say, 'you will never leave here, but at least you have a master who knows what jokes are'. After a long pause the speaker continued on, "I would have thought that at least worth a comment or two."

Faelyn just stood there, leaning against the stranger's weight. The arm was comforting, but all he wanted now was simply to be empty for once. All that hate, all that adrenaline from last night, he wanted it all to fade away. He'd thought that he'd managed to leave, or somehow find a free elf that would help him escape. No, he'd gotten lucky and found himself at the mercy of another Tevinter noble.

The wounds from his last master were starting to drip through the bandages and onto the nicely carpeted floor.

The stranger just made a quick exhale and shook his head, probably at the fact that his new guest was bleeding onto the carpet. "There's really nothing out there you know," he said, "just Minrathous."

"I just want to go home," Faelyn said at last, sounding as broken as he felt.

"And where is that, exactly?" Faelyn could almost feel the laugh in the stranger's voice and it made him bitter again. Bitter and angry at this whole thing for happening, but most of all he felt stupid for not doing what he should have been.

"Wycombe, in the Free Marches," Faelyn said, wondering how close he could come to Tranquil. He would practically need to be completely free of dreams or emotions to keep carrying on in Tevinter. He'd heard so many horror stories, but he'd always hoped it wouldn't really be this bad. But it was, it was that bad and now he was paying for it.

"Mmm," the voice made this sound as though the stranger were curious about Faelyn. Faelyn knew from experience that this was not true. Tevinter mages and nobles didn't care about elves or people. Slaves were slaves and Faelyn could only hope for the best in terms of his treatment in the future. "Right, we should get you cleaned up then. A waste of effort to drag you home and convince Father and my favorite suitor to save you if you die now."

Together they half walked, half dragged to the bed, where Faelyn had been sat down gently. The stranger moved away and Faelyn could finally get a good look at the man. Dark hair and hazel eyes met his and Faelyn found himself looking at his feet and trying to curl up as much as he could. What was in the water that made people in Tevinter prettier? Probably blood magic, Faelyn decided. Seemed that everything else was, so it made sense.

"You clearly have no interest in being cleaned up, I guess. Otherwise I wouldn't have been the only one actually walking," the man said, continuing his one sided conversation.

Faelyn slowly shifted over onto his side and covered himself with the blanket, the pain subsided as he laid there under the blanket.

The man sighed. "Look, I know that things for elves in Tevinter are..." the man said, stopping to try and pick the best words, "less than ideal. However, I don't want to hurt you. Let's try to get proper introductions in before we judge each other? I am Dorian Pavus, Altus mage."

Faelyn weighed his options for what he could do, and decided that unless there was some magic binding his name, then it couldn't hurt. "Faelyn," he mumbled into the blanket, "Faelyn Lavellan."

"Ah good," Dorian said from beside him, "and here I thought you'd stay silent just to spite me."

"Thought about it. Decided that you'd use blood magic to make me talk."

"Is that... a joke?" Dorian asked, the laugh evident in his voice. Whether it was from relief or the actual joke, Faelyn couldn't tell.

A beat of silence followed, as Faelyn didn't reply to that. He wasn't sure if it had been a joke either.

"So, I've never seen an elf with markings like yours before, where are you from?" Dorian said, trying to hold up the conversation for a bit longer. More silence ensued, so he sighed and stood up. "I have to get to my studies. I'll make sure that you're looked after, so rest up and you can tell us what happened in time." He rested his hand carefully on the blanket, adjusting it so that he could see Faelyn's face a bit more clearly.

Faelyn was only half awake, but he could feel the tiredness down to his bones, and he hoped the nap would help him block out more of the pain. A hand rested on the blankets for a bit longer than Faelyn would have preferred, but somehow it was comforting to know that not everyone was going to try and kill him. Faelyn didn't realize that a shadow had been over him until Dorian moved and left to do whatever work he had to do as a noble. It was probably stand there, do blood magic, and kill slaves he didn't like.

The light was uncomfortable, and Faelyn drew the blanket back over his face to try and sleep some before something went wrong again. His fingers lingered on the bandages across his chest, feeling the weight of them as though trying to figure out how badly he'd been hurt. He remembered a large knife, cutting and cutting. Grabbing a stranger's ankle in the night, and then he didn't remember much else. Anything earlier he just wanted to ignore and stuff into the deepest part of his mind.

But they lingered at the front, like shades and demons waiting to strike.

Dorian was writing his newest study out on parchment, but ultimately he couldn't find anything that made sense in the spellwork or the writing that he'd just done. He tapped the quill on the side of the parchment as if it would reveal the meaning and what he was trying to accomplish last night before he'd decided to get some fresh air. As he pondered it, he heard a knock at his door. Dorian sighed and put the parchment down on his desk.

"Where's the patient, love?" a blonde haired woman said as she stood in his doorway. He was sure that anyone else would think that she was beautiful, but Dorian simply found her irritating and a reminder of the expectations his father put on him.

"What, not even a hello for the man you're to marry?" the flirtatious attitude was easy, and it wasn't hard to fake interest in her. He'd been doing it all his life, so it was only natural that he'd learned to blend in to not cause trouble. "Frankly, it's insulting that my future wife isn't signing praises about me."

"Well, when you learn to be something worth singing in the streets about, I'll do that, but until then, I believe we have a half-dead elf to see," she smiled.

"Not half dead," Dorian said as he led her up the stairs. "I had a somewhat pleasant conversation with him this morning. Although, to call it a conversation is going a bit far, I admit."

"I'm surprised he said anything. It was a darn miracle that he survived," the woman said, pulling gloves from her bag. If he was bleeding from his wounds again she'd need something between her hands and the blood. Blood was disgusting.

"I'm still surprised that you could recognize the spell that did that to him, it was powerful blood magic and well hidden. You haven't told me what it was, though."

"The spell wasn't finished, and you were on the other side of the room. Gagging, if I recall correctly." She laughed at the memory. She didn't answer his question, but Dorian was distracted enough to not notice.

Dorian, meanwhile, adjusted his collar at the memory. He'd never been fond of blood, but when it came out of a dead thing his, what he called, slight discomfort at the sight of blood became manageable. However, it had been so much, and so fast. It'd been all he could do the previous night to replenish the blood the elf had lost through magic. He cleared his throat and said, "I was magically exhausted. I had to try and keep him alive to see you."

"Ah, so you had a plan? Because it looked more like you ran into the house with a nearly dead elf in your arms and cried to me, 'save him, please, Orana, please save him'." At the last part she put on a mocking tone, clasping her hands together and dramatically waving them around.

Dorian blushed and said, "I did not. I knew you were a skilled Spirit Healer and that you would be at my home so I asked politely if you would please help this man." He turned his face towards the wall of the hallway they had just entered. It was posh and lined with flowers. Dorian liked to call it the Guilt Hallway. It was mostly thanks to the gaze of many a Pavus man who had his portrait painted and hung in the hallway. He wondered why the painter chose for all of them to have an expression akin to looking upon Mabari waste, but chose not to say anything to his father. Besides, it was like they knew about Dorian. The real Dorian.

"Riiiiight," Orana said. "Your home is a maze I swear. I'll be glad to reach our destination quickly, before one of these portraits makes you realize that we are a floor below where we wish to be."

They came to a door that was still slightly open from Dorian's exit mere hours earlier. Dorian wondered if it had only been hours, because the time spent attempting to study felt more like most of a day. Dorian pushed it the rest of the way open for Orana, and let her move past him. She would work better undisturbed, so he elected to go back downstairs, and he was halfway out the door before Orana stopped him.

"You're a familiar face, Dorian. Get over here so that if he wakes up we can try to get more information out of him. I'd like to know what these markings-" Orana stopped mid-sentence and backed away. "Shit. He's from the South."

"What?"

"The markings are used by... what's the word? Dayish? A band of Elhven trying to preserve their old ways. How the hell he got up here to Minrathous is mystery, but damn it this isn't going to be easy when he wakes up. Probably a slave too. Dorian, you stole a slave," Orana said as she began to pace the room.

"I believe that you'll be sought after too, for repairs and doing magic upon another person's slave, Orana," Dorian said. He masked the panic with glibness and jokes. It was as good as stealing property. He sighed and tried to come up with something. "We can claim that we didn't know and simply were trying to help him survive. We were good samaritans or something."

"Well, if no one has made any waves to look for him, then he was probably bought illegally. Maybe while in the South," Orana shook her head and moved back to in front of her patient. "Which would make it an illegal purchase since slavery is illegal down there, and the new Fereldan King is raising a fuss down there by cracking down on slavers."

Dorian slowly moved behind her, and decided that studying the nearest item would probably prove more useful than him standing in the background gagging again. It had been a mirror, and quick check in it proved that yes, his hair was still impeccable despite him not really bothering to style it since yesterday morning. He considered it a small victory on his part.

A pained moan turned his gaze just long enough to see Faelyn starting to wake up again.

"You're awake," Orana said.

Faelyn, still tangled in a blanket and in severe pain, somehow managed to move quick enough to wrap himself further in the comforter and fall on the side of the bed opposite of Orana. Dorian felt like there should have been quiet sobbing from that side of the bed.

"Well, as far as first introductions go, mine was still better," Dorian preened from his corner.

"You'll reopen your wounds, uh... sir?" Orana tried to console the terrified elf.

"I'm not here I'm not here..." it was more a quick prayer to some unknown god as opposed to a reply. Faelyn clearly had been through a lot if he was already reduced to such a mess.

"Faelyn, it's Dorian. It's okay, look, I don't know what you heard, but not all Tevinter mages are blood mages," Dorian said as he put down the mirror. "I'm not a blood mage, and Orana isn't either."

"She was, and she did this. I won't go back, I won't go back!" Faelyn said, and as Dorian rounded the corner to see him, Faelyn tried to run for the door.

However, before he could get too far away, Dorian stepped on the blanket Faelyn was still wrapped up in and tripped the elf. This caused Faelyn to cry out in pain and curl up on the floor where he had fallen. Dorian winced in sympathy. Orana was already moving to offer more help to the fallen elf. Dorian thought the whole scene slightly comical, but Orana would probably slap him if he laughed right now.

"Help me get him back on the bed," Orana ordered.

"But he's bleeding again and I don't want-"

Orana gave him a look and Dorian silently helped her place the elf back onto the guest room's bed. He faintly wondered if he knew someone who could get blood out of silk sheets. Then again, given how gossipy and rumor-obsessed the other Altus were, Dorian decided that new sheets would be simpler and he could just burn the old ones. Dorian stood there for a while, watching Orana slowly work to heal the worst of the wounds and then begin to remove the bandages around Faelyn's chest.

Faelyn gripped them tightly and didn't let her try to remove them, "no."

"Faelyn," Orana said, "you just about had your chest sliced open. If I don't change these out that entire wound will get worse. If you're worried about modesty, nobody in this room is vaguely interested in seeing your chest or exploiting you."

Faelyn turned a deeper shade of red, but relented.

Dorian raised an eyebrow. "It's a chest. It's not like a man's chest is going to be all that scandalous anyway. I mean, with your physique some of the ladies might swoon, but that'll be it."

Orana gave him a look that simply said 'you're not helping' and went back to gathering up the bandages.

"What?"

"You're not very good at bedside manner, is all," she said. Once she coiled up the bandages, she made them burst into flame in her hand.

Faelyn pressed himself into the headboard of the bed so hard and fast, Dorian wondered if he would become a fixed part of it. Dorian had a thought and quickly turned away to hide his blushing face from the two. He had been doing so well thus far, but it was such a stupid little perverted thought that made him blush?

"You could go if you want to, Dorian," Orana said, "but we're almost done. It'll just be spell recovery from here on out, and the chest wound should heal in that time. It'll be tender for a while, so I hope we manage to not send him back to wherever he was before. I wish knew more about laws to try and see if we can get him under the Pavus house instead of his old one..."

"It can't have been that bad. It might have been an accident..." Dorian said. Nobody treated their slaves this badly, did they?

"He was starved, drugged to the gills, and his chest was sliced apart. Then the last blood magic spell nearly killed him," Orana said. "Fussy maneuvering on your part would probably save his life going forward."

"You're such a bleeding heart, Orana. The slaves are put under decent conditions, and it's better than being poor right? I doubt it's as bad as you think, dear."

Orana didn't say anything, but finished putting the bandages on Faelyn.

Dorian hadn't seen that many slaves being mistreated, in fact he hadn't seen any. So Orana was probably just being overdramatic. It was all probably fine.

Faelyn sat up quickly, holding his chest as though to assure himself that the nightmare was over and... she wasn't slashing apart his chest again. Every breath he took was a bitter, painful reminder that it had really happened. Those months in the small box, and then... and then...

"I heard yelling," Dorian said from the doorway. He was still in his nightclothes, his hair was a mess, but Faelyn could tell he'd attempted to style it before arriving.

"It's was nothing."

"Right, if you could please stop doing nothing, the rest of us need to sleep. Not to mention that sooner or later the servants will catch on that I have you up here," Dorian said, moving deeper into the room.

Faelyn bit his lip and looked away, because the small move was yet another reminder that he wasn't home, that he'd probably be a slave forever. "Sorry about that, I'm working on it."

"Is this about why I found you in the street, bleeding to death?"

Faelyn sunk himself into the blankets to escape Dorian's searching gaze. It didn't really help, but he could pretend that the small protection of the blanket was enough.

"You are incredibly stubborn about talking to me. I bet you talk to Orana all the time," Dorian said, trying to sound pouty.

Faelyn felt guilty only for a moment. He answered, "I don't talk to Tevinters."

"Fair enough, you've probably only heard horror stories about Tevinter."

"I lived a horror story about Tevinter."

Dorian was silent and Faelyn wanted to believe that the other man had left.

"I'm sorry."

"I-," Faelyn said, bundling himself further into the blanket pile he'd formed for himself. "I don't believe you, but thanks for the thought."

"Maybe it'll be better if we try to make each other allies instead of enemies? I could keep you away from whoever hurt you and you become my assistant."

"No. I don't do... blood magic or regular magic. I'm not a mage, I doubt I'd be any help."

"I do need someone to fetch my books and go over my notes from time to time. As my assistant you'd still be a slave," Dorian started to say before Faelyn moved just enough so that he would be able to glare at the Tevinter Mage, "but only legally. I'll give you an allowance and help you. Unless you just want to go home?"

Faelyn thought about the face the Keeper made as he was dragged away. There was no home left him there. Faelyn covered his face with the blanket again and replied, "I'll stay."

"Good. Then we'll have to ask you about various bits of your history and where you're from. Of course I'll have to work on your Tevinter as well. How much do you know about spellwork?"

"I'm not a mage. We're not allowed to study that if we're not a mage."

"Right. I'll see if we can find you a few sample books for spellwork and then a crash course in..." Dorian rambled on for a while, pacing as he tried to figure out all the details. Faelyn didn't really understand all of it, but he was reminded of a librarian he'd met in Wycombe.

"Uhm, why are you bothering with all this?"

"Because I need an assistant and you need a place to stay. A fair trade off, I say." Dorian stopped for a moment to yawn. "Right, it's late and we have a lot to do starting tomorrow. Sleep well, Mister Lavellan."

Faelyn watched the strange mage leave, but found himself wondering what exactly he'd just agreed to. On one hand, he's just given himself into slavery again, but on the other he was going to be working with a man who was the opposite of his last... owner. Faelyn was still trying to figure out if it was a win or loss on his part.

As he laid back to try and sleep again, he remembered his last day in clan Lavellan. He'd just returned from Wycombe, having sold some of the goods from the craftsman and making a tidy profit. He filled with dread as he realized he'd forgotten to change back into his 'approved' attire, and that a human was hanging around the camp. Faelyn quickly tried to hide from her, but all too soon her hand was on his collar.

"This one," the horrible woman had said. He should have known from her attire she was Tevinter, but all he wanted was to be lot go of. He wanted to run from his Keeper, because he'd be punished for not changing.

Instead, she looked him over with a cold eye, as though she were appraising the worth of livestock instead of a fellow member of her clan. She gave him a price too, and the Tevinter woman smiled and nodded. She waved her hand and his head got cloudy and he grew tired despite it being the middle of the afternoon. He was about to ask why this was happening when when he felt himself fall to the ground and lose consciousness.

Faelyn didn't understand why she'd used a sleep spell until he woke up in a small compartment in her carriage, and called him her new toy by speaking through the walls. The thought that he had become property had shaken him to his core, but it wasn't until later that the horrid reality had set in. When he tried to stretch out he found himself hitting walls. Even trying to shift to a more comfortable position was a challenge.

He'd screamed himself hoarse in that small compartment, and he sat there in the dark, completely alone in the world. The only thing soothing about the ride was the soft rocking back and forth. Otherwise he knew nothing of his ultimate destination, and the motives of this new woman. There wasn't even enough space to really stretch out properly. So he laid there in the dark. Waiting.

Waiting for months on end.

He wondered if he'd died in the dark compartment, and this was the Fade.