"The vir-abelasan may be too much for a mortal to comprehend. Brave it if you must, but know you this; you shall be bound forever to the will of Mythal."
And they didn't listen.
The first sign of insanity emerged a year after Corypheus.
It was small, practically negligible. The advisors and Inquisitor Trevelyan were gathered about the War table, debating heatedly with each other over whether or not the refugees needed food or blankets faster, who could deliver them in a swifter pace, and how much they could carry. They pointed names and mumbled curses under their breath, exhausted and worn, the Inquisitor rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm, feeling strained. The door swung open and in rushed a messenger, whispering hidden secrets in Leliana's ears and passing nervous glances at his leader. He smelled of old bones and musty dust, and his clothes were covered in dirt. The Inquisitor's nose itched, and he sneezed in his hands.
"Ara seranna-ma," he whispered under his breath, and felt his brow crinkle as the messenger left. The advisors immediately fell back into hastened speeches with each other, completely unawares of what Trevelyan had said. The Inquisitor frowned at himself, and realized he shouldn't have understood the foreign phrase, but twitched when he realized he did.
Every time the Inquisitor's party had set foot into an elven ruin without the presence of Solas, it had seemed they were stumbling about blindfolded in a darkened enclosure. It felt even more so once Solas had disappeared after Corypheus's death, and there was no consent from any other elf before or after trekking into ruins they knew nothing of. (Sera didn't count. She was… Well, she was Sera.)
But when the Dalish keeper had helpfully guided the Inquisition to several elven ruins containing ancient runes, the Inquisitor could hardly leave matters be. The vielfire shimmered in his grasp, its emerald glow bleeding into the cold, broken stone of a thousand years lost. Cassandra stood close beside him, shield guarding them both, Sera and Dorian practically wraiths behind them. Their footsteps shivered across the room, echoing in a low din, and the Inquisitor shuffled forward cautiously. Then, the song of a rune murmuring to them, like the thrum of a bell, called to them, and he held the vielfire high.
There, a flicker of light shimmered in the dark, murmuring its bubbling melody. When the Inquisitor's hand slid across it, it hummed, as if embracing an old friend, and Trevelyan suddenly felt warm and not so unfamiliar with his surroundings.
Behind him, Sera snorted. "This place is weird. All stuffy and cold, innit? I hate it."
Something hot burned at his ribcage, and he tossed a glare at Sera, his grip on the torch tightening threateningly. She noticed the heat and steadied her gaze, looking confused and miffed. "What?" she demanded, and the gall in which she said it struck him like hot iron and and forced his tongue to a sharp point. He was about to snap back before the rune faded from his fingertips and died in a sad sigh.
Then, the fire was gone, and Trevelyan blinked, feeling cold and suddenly very lonely. His grip on the torch relaxed, and he shook his head, as if to pull himself from a daze. The ruins lost its familiarity, and became just as foreign as he remembered them to be.
"Nothing," he mumbled. "Let's go."
Then, he began to forget things. Big things. Things that should not be forgotten.
Like, when Iron Bull asked him what it had felt like, to be nobility, and Trevelyan smiled, reaching for the memory of scented candles and rushing servants, and suddenly he remembered nothing. He frowned and wrinkled his nose in his way to recall matters, and felt something cold touch him when he realized there was nothing there to remember.
Stress, he put it off as, and decided instead to spin a tale for Bull from stories he heard Josephine tell. But he wasn't a very good storyteller, and Iron Bull left with a strange, hardened look on his face, and the Inquisitor knew that Bull knew that he was lying.
He was left in the tavern, staring at his tankard. He promised to make it up to the Qun one day, and ignored the twist in his stomach.
He looked out the window, which was odd, because he didn't remember a window being there when he had slept in this room for two entire years. But it was a window; there was a man staring at him, with this odd, confused expression on his face, frowning at him as if he were an unwanted stranger. He frowned at him back, because, after all, this was his room and he was the intruder, peering into his room like some poorly-disguised spy like Sera.
Harding whisked herself into the room, in all her bubbly cheer, and glanced at the Inquisitor. "Hey, you," she cooed, and he only passed her a glance in return. She hopped on the chair-hopped, because she was a dwarf, after all-and leaned over the desk at him. "What'cha doing?"
"Do you see this man? He won't stop staring at me. Whenever did we have a window installed in this room?" Trevelyan felt irritated that the man had the gall to mime his lips as he spoke, and secretly planned to punish him.
Harding merely glanced at the window, smile wide and cheeks rosy, as she chuckled at him and indulged the Inquisitor for a moment. "He looks very strange," she murmured, poising her lips and frowning in mock seriousness. "I sure don't recognize him." She watched as the Inquisitor glared through the window for several more moments, before allowing her giggle to die out in a tired sigh. "Let's go. Seeker Cassandra wants me to scout out the Hinterlands again."
It was only until the door swung shut that Trevelyan realized that the man who followed his every moment was him, that he was not staring out a window, but at a mirror. And he hadn't known that.
He sat down, on the floor, feet planted firmly against it, sandwiched his hands between his knees, and began to breathe heavily.
He remembered staring at the serving elves in Skyhold with a cold forlornness in his stomach, something that he couldn't shake. The paintings in Solas's room began to make sense, as did the books about elven history lying in a coat of forgotten dust by a forgotten companion.
He spent long hours, alone in that one room filled with relics, back against the door, gaping at the eluvian in Skyhold, treasuring it. He felt connected to it, close to it, as if it belonged to him, as if he could reach out and enter a world more familiar than any other.
"I worry about the effects of the Well of Sorrows," Cullen had said one day, glancing at Trevelyan with thin lips. The Inquisitor always passed him puzzled looks, which made Cullen shuffle in embarrassment and immediately dismiss the suggestion.
As much as he tried to ignore it, Cullen's words echoed in his mind every day, and the Inquisitor felt something cold begin to wrap its fingers around his throat.
They were drinking, in the tavern, Trevelyan and his inner circle, giggling over exploits against Red Templars and demons, hollering for more drinks and more food. Varric had invited Cole to play another round of Diamondback with Iron Bull, Dorian, Josephine, and Cassandra, the Inquisitor sitting at the sidelines, watching with a grin tugging at his lips. The room shook with guffaw as shirts were thrown off and coins were tossed into the air.
As the night drew on and the game continued, the Inquisitor's mind drifted, stupidly, as he fumbled with his fingers, thinking.
Was he himself anymore? Had the Well… affected him in some way?
Fingers, grasping, flexing, turning, fiddling, so scared, too scared, am I going to lose myself? Words clash together, like a stream in a moat, and pointed ears feel more right than rounded, and I feel very wrong.
Trevelyan squirmed, feeling as if something wasn't right, and felt as if he was being examined. He longed for privacy, and delved deeper into his thoughts, or perhaps another's, to bury himself in a place he felt safe and disconnected.
It was only when his head snapped up and he realized the room was very quiet, that he felt the cold tendrils crawl up to his throat again. Everyone was staring at him and Cole still whispering words. When Trevelyan listened, he realized they were his, and that he had echoed it-all of it-to everyone in the room, and his mouth tasted like ash. He suddenly stood, the chair sliding loudly in the silence of the tavern and toppling over, as he glared at Cole.
He left the tavern very quickly that night, and did not answer to any summons until the next afternoon.
When Josephine asked what family Trevelyan had, he almost listed an abundance of names: Gegan, Fenros, Paimet, and Jathon, all from the Temple, smiling and sharing tales of magic and spells that weren't forgotten but should be, that are, in this time, but not in that. He smelled incense and saw gold glitter from walls and ceilings, heard the bubbling of rivers of cool water, and felt the armor press comfortably against his chest, shaped over his thin frame and his hand tracing over the vallaslin bloomed across his cheeks.
The shem was staring at him, expectantly, with a pinched brow and flush lips, and he recognized her from nowhere.
"Inquisitor?" she called, and suddenly a memory sparked, and he realized he had almost forgotten that her name was Josephine. He blinked, and tried to recall what she asked of him. Family? Why, yes, there was…
The world buzzed around him, tilting and heaving, leaving him off-balanced and disorientated. He forgot. Who was his mother again? His father? Did he have siblings?
Yes, of course, Gegan was his brother, smiling with his silver eyes as he told him of his vhenan, his face soft in the glow of the temple.
No, whispered a voice, slapping him across the cheek. No, no, no, that's all wrong. Something is wrong. Very wrong.
Trevelyan rubbed the Anchor on his palm, said he felt ill, and dismissed himself.
He was heaving, nothing coming out but air and the taste of salt. He scrambled for memories, any of his childhood, his parents, his colleagues. He delved deep, fingers wiggling, searching every crevasse of the jar to find some recollection.
Nothing.
Something had replaced it instead. Thoughts of magic, knowledge of battles and deeds and elvhen lore. Recollections of grand cities, wonders across Thedas, beauty, such incredible beauty, and began to feel a deep longing to run out of Skyhold and back to his brother, to his life, to the temple and the smell of perfumes.
The Inquisitor wrenched himself out of those moments, sweat beading his forehead, as he clutched at his head, fingers fondling his ears, repeating to himself that it was normal to have round ears and ignoring the crawling sensation in his spine.
Red Templars had littered the battlefield, their shrieks carried with the wind, as they clawed at their weapons and taunted at their opponents with wagging heads. Vivienne making quick use of their movements, scorched them in their armor, her magic snapping back to her with precision that only the Circle could have demonstrated to her. Blackwall tore through the Templar defenses, sword wielded in deadly arcs that dug deep through gaps of armor and into meaty flesh. Those still left standing couldn't see the Inquisitor, daggers singing in the air, until the blades were buried into their necks and they were left gurgling and heaving, blood spilling from their lips.
Trevelyan itched the back of his head-he must have a rash or a bug bite there, because it had annoyed him all day-and flourished the dagger in his grip, breathing in the biting chill of the snowy tundra. Vivienne was disposing of the last Red Templars, the creature making a disturbing bubbling sound, when the Inquisitor surveyed the area and motioned to Blackwall to scout out for more Templars. The man nodded and trotted away, Vivienne casually plucking gear from her fallen enemies. Trevelyan scratched his head again, belaying the itch, as he crawled up to a higher point to scour for their exact location. He shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted. His itch came again.
"This bloody bite," he grumbled, titling his head again to scratch, and suddenly the world tipped with it, and then wrenched itself from his feet.
Buzzing began behind him, insistent and annoying, like bees around his head. Then, it grew louder, and the Inquisitor nibbled at his lip as he tried to ignore it. The noises must have resented that, for they increased their volume and mass, the hubbub as real as it was in the tavern early in the evening. Echoes came, whispering in his ear and dying with a sigh, the noise becoming conversation. It sounded wrong, like it was not his own tongue, but he knew it just as well. Murmuring over each other, whispering, clawing, getting too loud in his head. Talking, talking, please be quiet, not listening, so loud, screaming, shouting, warning, look out, look out, look-
"Inquisitor, look out!"
Something struck him, hit him, making his bones bend and scream out in pain, and he felt himself falling, the ground becoming much closer than it had been a second ago. He felt the world slam down on him, crushing him into the snow, and fire burst in his chest, lashing out with fury and fierceness. The voices died out, only for the soft ringing of a bell in his ears, the sounds a murmur and very far away, echoing to him. His lips moved weakly, quivering, and it felt as if his chest had caved in, empty and forgotten in dust.
It was only when everything spun dizzyingly around him, day becoming night in several brief moments, the grasping hands of someone concerned clawing at him, that he realized he couldn't breathe, and then everything became nothing.
As he sat in the infirmary, he knew the advisors were getting suspicious. Perhaps Leliana already knew. The way that she glared at him, as if he had kept something special and private to her away from her, like a cruel master of a slave, before she spurred off in a huff of air, leaving her scent behind to wallow in. Josephine and Cullen had been more kind, sitting beside his bed when they thought he was sleeping, consoling him and each other that he would heal in days soon.
The Inquisitor never slept, though. Every time he shut his eyes, the voices came, calling to him, whispering him elvhen lullabies and soothing tales of events he shouldn't know about, but did anyway. He had indulged with the voices before, listening to the strange tales in a foreign tongue that was not so foreign to him anymore, and sickened himself to find that he actually liked them and wanted to listen to more.
He stopped listening after that, because when he did, he began to believe that these tales were his own and not someone else's, and that his own tales should be someone else's, one of the shem, and in those moments he beckoned to the healer and asked for a bucket to vomit in.
Soon, his eyes were swollen and sullen, deep-set with dark circles, his skin looking pale and sickly. "I'm just tired", he would repeat to his inner circle, to Dorian who looked as if he was losing a loved one, to Varric who fidgeted with his fingers and mumbled jokes, to Vivienne who regarded him in cold silence, to Iron Bull who glared at him as if he was watching a stranger intrude upon his home, to Blackwall who looked like a lost child, to Cassandra who seemed threatened to either punch him or sob, to Sera who gave him bites of pie without question, and to Cole, who understood everything but told no one, because the Inquisitor made him swear it, and it would hurt him even more if he broke that promise.
No one believed him, of course. That he was simply tired. But they did not press, and that made it all the harder to conceal.
It was humor, in the end, that broke him.
He wasn't a very good liar. He knew that. But, for the life of him, he didn't understand why he did it anyway, insisted that he was fine when he had finally been released from the infirmary, that everything was fine, that he actually knew who he was before the Inquisition and he wasn't screaming inside, howling and sobbing and feeling empty inside because he couldn't remember, and it was leaving him raw and open.
Of course Iron Bull was the one to connect the dots. He was a smart man, bred into the life of spying since before he had horns, and so he knew a man simply by their movements and speech.
He trapped him in the stables, when Trevelyan was trying to remember what horseriding felt like because Josephine had mentioned that nobility rode horses and that she complimented him on his riding abilities, and so he rode in hopes to spur something back. He didn't remember being nobility, but it felt like an interesting concept.
The great beast of a man stood at the entrance, large enough to block the bulk of it, folding his arms over the great mass of muscle he called a chest, and glared. It was a harsh glare, laced with anger and confusion and fear. Trevelyan tried not to remember that elven face that gave him the same glare, once, when he flew off into battle, the clamor of armor chiming as he straddled onto the halla, I'll be back, ma vhenan-
Stop it. Stop it.
"What's up with you?" Bull snapped, his rumbling voice practically shaking the wooden boards.
The Inquisitor decided to feign surprise.
Bull's fingers tapped over his biceps, looking impatient. "Don't do that. You honestly think nobody would have noticed? Whatever it is you're doing?"
No, but what can you do to help me?
"And what is it I'm doing?" he said, or tried to, because it sounded odd on his tongue, not how it should be, and Trevelyan rubbed his neck with a shaky hand, pondering that.
Bull's brow climbed, and his eyes narrowed in rage. "Cute, boss. Just hilarious. How about we try that again in a language I can understand."
The floor was tilting again, spinning around him, the voices at the edge of his mind, almost taunting him, and the taste of ash was on his tongue again. He staggered back, hands clutching the corner of Blackwall's table, fingers gripping with such ferocity that his arm shook.
He thought in elvish, once or twice, Cole next to him shuffling uneasily, but he had never spoken it. It sounded rugged on his tongue, but with a familiarity a local should have, and a human should not.
And suddenly Bull wasn't there, no one was there, just the howling sound of a dying mind and a dying sanity, the blood roaring in his ears, spiders crawling up his back and puncturing his skin with such a chill that he couldn't feel anything anymore. Something swelled in his chest, threatening to burst and to spill over, filling his chest with such ache that he could hardly breathe.
He wanted to scream, and instead found himself giggling, hand pinching the bridge of his nose as his shoulders shook with each bout of laughter that took him. He giggled until his eyes watered, until he keeled over, holding his sides and roaring, leaving Iron Bull pale and looking almost torn to stay or get help. He was calling his name, he was sure of it, but the Inquisitor was still laughing, still screaming inside and feeling everything fall apart and die away.
Everything left him, and the laughter became tears, Bull rushing over to steady him because he was falling, falling and could never get up, because everything was leaving him. He forgot his name, forgot his family, forgot what it was like to sit on a horse and feel it move between his legs. He forgot the way Bull had muttered at a curious officer who had come to the stables to see the commotion to get help, find Cassandra, find Cullen, find someone, forgot what Bull's voice had sounded like as a concerned friend, beckoning him to just talk it out, in elvish or otherwise, forgot the way the clamor of feet rushed to him as Cullen stared into his eyes and saw only an empty husk.
He forgot who Trevelyan was, and soon forgot that he should have never drank from the Well of Sorrows in the first place.