Josephine had become more of a night creature since the conclusion of the Inquisition's campaign to stop Corypheus. Unlike the other advisers, her work did not lessen in the wake of victory. Requests poured in endlessly, roll after roll after roll of parchment finding its way onto Josephine's desk, each one demanding a timely response. Most of the requests were for visits to Skyhold; many nobles were absolutely fascinated by the place's numinous qualities. Josephine allowed that it must indeed seem like an enchanting place. Tucked away in the mountains, shrouded in mist and cool winds, Skyhold beating with a heart of iron. No cathedral looked more imposing than the Inquisitor's. Of course, the nobles most likely cared little for the scenery, preferring instead personal attention from the Herald of Andraste. Meanwhile, pilgrims flocked dozen-fold to the fortress, charmed by the rural grandeur. Like the nobility, the pilgrims wanted only to cast themselves in the Herald of Andraste's glow, perhaps earn some residual blessing in the process, but but few won the pleasure. "I'm sorry," Josephine would say, "but the Inquisitor cannot make an appearance. She is a terribly busy woman." It saddened Josephine to deny the hopeful a glimpse of the woman whom they idolized, but it saddened the Antivan more to contribute to the stack of pressure that lay on Lady Trevelyan.
The Inquisitor had dragged herself and her comrades from death's maw times over, she had carried the weight of Thedas's survival in her heart, she had stood staunchly in the center of every downfall and build-up and climax of history, and yet nothing appeared more trying to the woman than the accusation of divinity. Her regular fortitude of manner dissipated the moment someone rested their faith at her feet. Josephine saw the way she squirmed, the uncharacteristic speechlessness, the obvious need to escape. Thus, when the Inquisitor wasn't truly too busy for company, the ambassador made something up to keep her clear of these situations.
The truth was, however, that Lady Trevelyan was rarely in need of an excuse. Recovered as the world may be, it still writhed with illness. Red lyrium poisoned the land and whoever happened upon it, Venatori remnants still posed a threat, and rumors of Grey Warden infighting made the prospect of a future blight even more inauspicious. Life after Corypheus was not what Josephine imagined. She used to daydream about a peaceful rift in time following the blighted magister's downfall. She and Lady Trevelyan would be together while they readjusted to the warmth of the sun when impending doom no longer hung over them. They'd dance for days and take walks in the garden and idle along the Antivan harbor. Post-victory reality was hardly so idyllic. Josephine didn't know what stung more: that she had ever thought a thing possible, or that it wasn't true.
Josephine mulled over these thoughts with an unfortunate sobriety as she sat in the dark of her office. The candles on her desk were growing short and her eyes couldn't make out the letters on the parchment anymore. She gave a sigh of resignation and braced her hands on the sides of her chair as she rose. Her back ached from curling over her papers. She knew she had smudged her eye liner at some point in the night, but she did not care.
She went to the window behind her desk and looked out at the silver dotted silhouette of the mountains, black swirls against jeweled velveteen blue. She thought of the nighttime waters by her family's summer cottage and subsequently felt an aching emptiness in the landscape before her. When did this place stopped feeling like home? She supposed it never was; nothing could occupy the space in her heart set aside for Antiva City, for the rolling vineyards and her father's courtyard where he painted and the boats bobbing whimsically in the sea— and yet, for all of Skyhold's modesty, it usually felt like enough to her. More than enough, even, thanks to the Inquisitor. When she was present.
Josephine felt for the knob of the top drawer of her desk. She pulled it open and removed a familiar note. Bringing the candle as close as she could without setting it aflame, she read the schedule: Start of the month: Inquisitor sets out for Emprise Du Lion; should be back in less than a fortnight.
It had already been a day past a fortnight. Josephine sighed and bowed over her desk to blow out the candles. She prayed for Lady Trevelyan's safety as she walked to the door. Faith was a challenging and often fickle thing for Josephine but she had to believe that the woman who had snatched the future from between the teeth of a monstrous future was being watched over.
The prospect of sleeping alone again was unfulfilling, so she reminisced over the especially sweet nights they had spent together. She remembered the time she had it in her head to bring the Inquisitor a bouquet of flowers. She felt nervous and boyish and suddenly quite silly once she revealed the colorful pièce de résistance. She was afraid Trevelyan would laugh or cock her eyebrows in that way of hers, but she went red and flustered and giddy. Josephine was reminded of how good it was to feel safe around someone.
Whenever Josephine snuck into Lady Trevelyan's room at night, she always brought a stack of papers with her to the high quarters, along with a bag of clothes. It made coming out in the morning less conspicuous. No, Ser, I'm just going up to the Inquisitor's quarters to discuss a few documents. Oh, I was just starting early on some ambassadorial matters with the Inquisitor. Josephine knew they weren't fooling anyone, not since the courting became public, but it seemed the decent thing to do to at least pretend about chastity when nobility and Chantry figures were involved.
But on that night, Josephine left the papers at her desk and made her way to her own quarters.
Inquisitor Trevelyan was glad to leave the frigid hills of Emprise Du Lion. She would have been ecstatic if she didn't have to trek through the snow to get back to Skyhold. Her calves stung as they plunged through the foot-and-a-half of accumulation. Each step was a battle to yank her leg back out and keep herself from falling forward. Still, it felt good to leave the glowing red lyrium-dotted hills behind.
She had come back to Emprise Du Lion to oversee efforts to remove the lyrium from the area. The Inquisition was the only organization anyone in Thedas could agree on to be responsible for a task of this import. Lady Trevelyan supposed she should be proud about that but more than anything it irked her. The Inquisition had sacrificed enough already just to give people the luxury of worrying about the dire things like red lyrium. Now it was their job to get rid of it, too? Was no one else in Thedas capable? Since defeating Corypheus and consequently fulfilling its purpose, the Inquisition had become even more of an international peacekeeping force, but she had to wonder why no one else was tending to the world's problems. Darkspawn troubling your town? Send for the Inquisition! Bandit raid on a local hamlet? Send for the Inquisition! Militia of farmhands who've never wielded anything more deadly than a plow? Send for some Inquisition trainers! It was a noble enough cause but it had started to feel...
"Maker's red ass, I hate this weather," Varric grumbled as he struggled against the snow. He wore a bearskin cape over his tunic which, for the first time, he deigned to button since the weather was so raw. Trevelyan wondered if his chest hair would freeze and crack off. There would be many sad ladies if that became true, herself included. "You'd think magical glowing red shit would warm up the landscape a little bit." His breath tumbled out of his mouth and dissipated into the cold. "Where's the next inn?"
"No more inns from here on out," the Inquisitor sighed. "Last night's was the last one on our path. Only thing between us and warmer places is a snowy hell pit."
"Oh, fantastic!" Dorian cheered sarcastically. "It's campfires and igloos from here on out. What an adventure."
They struggled against the weather for an hour before Trevelyan allowed them to make camp. Sera threw the sticks she'd gathered on top of the other sticks she'd gathered and then nearly collapsed on top of the stray log Dorian sat on. He pulled a gloved hand out from under his thigh and sprang his fingers at the sticks, setting them a flame and then quickly returning his hand to its warmer spot. Varric pulled his cloak tight around his body and sat at on Dorian's other side. They all courteously left a bum-sized space at the end of the log for their Inquisitor, but she was kneeling by the flames, rearranging the sticks Sera had dumped carelessly.
"Does veilfire keep people warm?" Varric asked Dorian, eyeing the meager amount of firewood they gathered. "Can't you just light one of those?"
"The cold's shit, Dwarfy, but ain't worth messin' with veil shit," Sera interjected. Trevelyan couldn't help but roll her eyes behind her hand. Normally she was able to tolerate Sera's intolerance, even when it edged on foolish ignorance, but the Inquisitor's patience was thinning with each cold wind that slipped through the collar of her coat. Were her companions always this whiny, or was she just short of temper?
"Unfortunately, no. Veilfire does not possess that warm, toasty property," Dorian said, clearly disappointed with the fact. Varric tossed up his eyebrows in a valiant attempt to roll with the punches— even when the punches were cold blasts of air and wet snow and a sorry lack of alcohol.
Dorian became uncomfortably aware of the empty space on the end of the log and the empty silence over the camp. He was eyeing the Inquisitor curiously. She wasn't the most talkative woman, but she had a habit of filling up discomforts with distracting words. It was one of her many ways of helping people, as if she owed people any more than she had already given: her time, her life, her friends.
"My good woman, Milena, is it really so much warmer a foot closer to the fire than next to all these warm, handsome bodies? Mine in particular?" Dorian tweaked his mustache and grimaced when it felt cold and stony between his fingers.
"Mm," Sera hummed in agreement, "could use a snuggle buddy." Varric gave a snort of laughter and shook his head. Sera's flirting with the Inquisitor was always a subject of humor among the group. Except around Vivienne, that is; that woman could never get over her disdain for the Red Jenny, and she took personal offense whenever Sera tarnished the Inquisitor's name with her forwardness. Milena couldn't be bothered less by Sera's harmless comments, and she even exchanged a few of her own when the mood struck her. She was, however, presently not in the mood and thus opted to meagerly mutter, "I'm going to find some more firewood. This stack isn't half as much as we need." Sera sat up at the offense against her, but all three watched Trevelyan go in silence. They exchanged confused and concerned looks, and Sera even looked a smidge guilty under that picaresque cowl of hers.
Night was climbing over the mountains when Trevelyan entered a dense wood not too far from camp. Where she could not find fallen twigs, she reached up and broke off a limb herself. The crack of a branch snapping off the trunk was a thick, rich sound, and as horrible as it felt to dismember the trees it also gave Trevelyan a means of letting out some of her frustrations.
And the list of frustrations was quite long these days, but it was the confrontation of one complicated question that darkened her disposition: what lay ahead in her future?
It was funny, really, if funny was the same thing as painfully ironic. The Corypheus threat granted the Inquisitor more luxuries than she initially realized. Impending doom gave her purpose. It made the uncertainties of the future irrelevant in light of the enormity of the present. It gave her conviction and direction and a state of being that she did not need to constantly question. Now that it was all over, she lost all of those things. Milena had no answer to what was next for her, or even if there could be anything after the Inquisition.
The future's uncertainties included Josephine, too, which was perhaps the most frustrating factor. She loved Lady Montilyet dearly and wanted nothing more than to be in her life, but she was growing doubtful about whether such a thing was possible, at least the way she imagined it. They both had pressing obligations. The mark on her hand seemed to bind her to violence and toil, even after defeating Corypheus. It had been months since their triumph and still there were rifts to close, red lyrium to erase, and religious expectations to fulfill, all because of the Anchor. The last was the worst of all of it, for in being an Andrastian symbol there were several more impossibilities: of anonymity, of regularity, of never having to look over her shoulder to see if assassins were after her or the people she loved.
Thus, Milena Trevelyan questioned if she could even marry Josephine Montilyet with such baggage tied around her own ankles. Marriage meant duty, and Milena had no way of knowing if she could escape her inquisitorial duties— or if she even wanted to. Marriage meant relocation, and Milena would never ask Josephine to consider Skyhold her permanent home. After all, Josephine was head of her house and utterly charmed by her home country. So where did Milena fit in her life? It seemed it would take a considerable amount of sacrifice to belong.
She reached up and constricted her fingers around the thick throat of a branch. She gave a tug, and then another tug, and then a savage rip cracked through the air and the weight of the tree's limb fell against Milena's muscles. She gathered up all the pieces in her arms and trudged back to camp, a sour countenance distorting her face.
There was a knock at the door. "Come in," Josephine called. The door to her office creaked open and a purple-cloaked figure stepped through. "Good morning, Josie," came a familiar Orlesian lilt. Leliana approached Josephine's desk, her roguish smirk attracting attention whatever she held behind her back. She brandished a wooden chest with a halla carving under the handle. She set it down on Josephine's desk. "Compliments from the Dalish clan Lady Trevelyan saved," she explained. Josephine set down her quill, wiped a stray drop of ink off her hand, and opened the box. There were dark green shreds of dried leaves inside, so much they were nearly pouring out of the box. There was a strong whiff of mint.
"They gave us tea?" Josephine surmised, taken aback by the humble sincerity of the gift. She knew the Dalish were nomadic, and that lifestyle could hardly afford organized tea harvesting. How exactly they obtained this quantity of the delicacy she did not know, but the undoubted difficulty of the task made the gift touching. It felt so much more sincere than the overly-stylish gilded armors the nobles often sent the Inquisitor, who simply had too much self respect to wear rubied chest plates into battle.
"They wanted me to give it to the Inquisitor. Oh, and, the keeper wishes the two of you a lovely union." There was mischief in her tone.
"Union? Wh— the Dalish said this?"
Leliana gave a whimsical, windy laugh. It reflected a side of her that was starkly different from her usual severity, the side of her that charmed Josie when they first met in Orlais. "You should know just about everyone in Skyhold is talking about you and the Inquisitor. They're all hoping you'll get married here at Skyhold so they'll be able to attend. I bet it didn't take long before the Dalish heard of the news, too. They were living amongst our soldiers, after all." Leliana made a gallant effort to bite back the laughter that was bubbling up inside her as Josephine's face flushed red. For a woman of nobility and court, Josephine certainly had a hard time being talked about, especially when it involved her relationship with the Inquisitor. Then again, Leliana always knew her to be easily embarrassed.
Josephine propped her elbows on her desk, right on top of the still-wet letter she was just writing, and hid her face behind her hands. Leliana let out a gasp when she was unable to prevent her friend from spoiling her work. "Oh, watch you're sleeves, Josie," she sighed through her frown, reaching out and wrapping her hands around Josephine's wrists to lift her inkstained elbows off the parchment. Josephine looked down at the destruction of her morning's work— as well as her satin sleeves— and suddenly felt the urge to crawl under her desk and sleep in defeat. Leliana took her by the hands, laughing away the matter for Josie's sake, and brought her to the water basin in the corner. The redhead dipped her hands in the water and began to rub the ink off Josephine's shirt, a discouraging frown wrinkling her face when the ink only spread.
"It's no use," Josephine said, resigned, "but thank you." She gave the former bard one of those flat smiles, an attempt at conveying gratitude, and retrieved the box of tea leaves from her desk. She held it up meaningfully. "I think it's time for a break anyway," she announced, rubbing the side of her face tiredly. "Care to join me?"
Leliana knew she should say no. She had a lot of work to do as well, and she only meant to take a few minutes to deliver the tea to Josephine. But she saw the dark rings under Josephine's eyes, the lopsidedness of her eyeliner (which she wouldn't dare point out to her), and most importantly, she detected what was missing: her usual springiness. It had been too long since Josephine seemed her usual talkative, vibrant, even occasionally indulgent self. Work could wait; there were more precious things to accomplish, like restoring Josephine Montilyet's smile. Putting on a noblewoman's airs, Leliana jokingly fawned, "Lady Montilyet, I thought you'd never ask!"
Josephine handed her a cup of tea. Leliana took the warm porcelain between her fingers and breathed in the steam contentedly. Josephine lowered herself into the chair besid her and took noiseless sips of the hot liquid. "The mint is a lovely touch," Leliana told the rim of her cup. Josephine hummed in agreement.
Leliana watched her movements and noted her wordlessness. She set down her cup and reached over the armrest of Josephine's chair to hold her hand. The Antivan looked up, eyes questioning Leliana's, and the former bard gave the ambassador a sad smile. "I know you are troubled, Josie," she said gently. "Tell me why."
Josephine opened her mouth to speak but her mind wasn't ready with the right words. She sighed, then ducked her head under her hand. "I think... I think I just miss Milena," she answered heavily.
Clearly, the Antivan woman hadn't taken the time to be introspective. Leliana recognized the tactic: keep yourself so busy that you can't think about what is troubling you. The spymaster was guilty of this maneuver herself, but she knew it became unhealthy if prolonged. Then she would have to coax the words out of Josie to get her to start working through whatever was bothering her.
"I think you tell half a truth," Leliana said. "You miss Milena, but that is not the only thing bothering you, yes?"
Josephine looked out from behind her hand, meeting Leliana's eyes. She wanted to curse the woman for trying to get her to talk through what she had no energy to process, but she knew Leliana meant well. She always meant well, even in her line of work. The spymaster took on trying tasks and made decisions that would weigh anyone's conscious like shackles in a deep river, and yet she did it all because she meant well. Strange way the world works, Josie mused somberly.
"You are right," she relented, "there is something else bothering me. I just don't know what to call it yet." She frowned. "But I feel agitated and impatient and quite confused." She looked for an answer in Leliana's crystalline eyes. They held compassion, but Leliana was no oracle. The best she could provide was a gentle rub on the back of Josie's hand. Leliana mulled over the issue for a moment, trying to find something comforting to say or some pearl of advice, but she came up with nothing. No words could untangle whatever knot was developing inside of Josephine— at least, not Leliana's words.
There was, however, one thing Leliana knew of that could ameliorate Josephine's frustrations. If she could convince her.
Thank you for reading! Please, if you liked this, leave me a review. I'd love to hear whatever you thought about this piece :) Do have a lovely day.