The cabin which had been assigned to Chance, over his objections – a tent would be fine, surely there must be others, families, the sick, that needed it more than he did – had its benefits. It was warm, with the strong wooden walls blocking the bulk of the mountain winds. It was quiet; on the edge of the village there was precious little through traffic. And it was private, which was fortunate, because his prediction for the day had been far too accurate. First, there had been the discussion in Taigen's cabin. Then training – he still couldn't cast half the spells he'd learned as an apprentice worth a damn, when it used to be so easy, instinctive. Finally, Lady Ambassador Montilyet had made the lovely announcement that the Inquisition would be sending him to Val Royeaux to speak to the assembled Mothers. It was too much, far too much, for one day.
Lying on the bed for which someone, somehow, had managed to procure coverings from the Free Marches – he suspected the selfsame Lady Ambassador, or perhaps Luck – he folded his hands behind his head, tilted his head, and watched the door.
It didn't move.
Not that he expected it to; he received few visitors. Truth be told, he hadn't spent that much time in Haven, and really only used the cabin to sleep, bathe and dress, so it wasn't entirely surprising. There would be the odd messenger, Varric, Luck.
If she hadn't come to confront him by now, then she was bound to be off sulking somewhere.
He groaned softly, rolled over to sit up, bare feet cold on the world floor.
"If Andraste will not go to Minrathous…" he murmured, getting down on the floor to dig under the bed for his socks. He sat, tried to tug them on over icy toes, only to realise, as his fingers slipped over the slick coating, that his feet were literally frozen. A strangled half-scream left him, the balled up sock flung across the room. It caught on the wall, stuck a moment before falling gently to the floor. His head followed, to fall into his hands, elbows braced on his knees.
Breathe, the ghost of Cassandra's voice, stern, echoed through his head, you must focus. In through the nose, hold, out through the mouth, repeat, until he had the strength to lift his head, glare at his toes.
"Stop that," he pointed firmly at the offending foot, dispelling the collected ice. "We are not nervous. We are not going to apologise, because we are not wrong."
He got to his feet, walked across the room to retrieve the sock, and sat down heavily on his bed. In the process of pulling the second sock up past the middle of his foot, it struck him, his groan morphing into a tired chuckle as he muttered, "I'm not sure if this is better or worse than talking to flowers."
Socks and boots eventually sorted, he stood, and lifted an apple from the basket on his desk as he passed. He tossed it between his hands as he left the peace of his little cabin for the wider world outdoors.
Small though it was, Haven was loud, bustling. Like a hive, it was filled with the toing-and-froing of spies, tinkers, merchants, refugees, farmers, soldiers and diplomats: the army of the faithful, such as it was, formed primarily from rabble. He nodded to the ones that bowed, waved to the ones whose names he actually remembered. It was a smaller number than it should have been, another thing he was having difficulty with these days. His back itched from the dozens of pairs of eyes upon it, as he passed in a loop from his cabin, to Leliana up by the Chantry, through to Solas near the apothecary, down to Varric, smack in the centre of everything. By the time he'd completed his loop, all that remained of his apple was the core, casually tossed to the side after he pocketed the seeds.
"Two-step," Varric greeted him. "Need something?"
Chance gave a half-shrug, thumbs hooked onto the belt of his standard-issue Inquisition robes. "Have you seen my sister, by any chance?"
Varric looked at him, lips pressed together like he had something precious locked under his tongue.
Chance raised an eyebrow in return, "Something I should know, Varric?"
A rumbling huff left the dwarf as the smirk he'd been suppressing finally broke free, and it dawned on Chance what it was that he had said. "By any chance. Yes, yes. Very clever. I have certainly never heard that one before."
He rolled his eyes as Varric continued to chuckle. "So…?"
"Last I heard, she had the Horsemaster cornered. Or maybe it was the other way around." Varric waved a hand vaguely back and forth. "Cards later?"
He shouted down the stairs, because Chance was already halfway down, on the way to what passed for Haven's stables: a fence on two sides of a corner of grass between the smithy and the village wall.
"Always," the mage shouted back over his shoulder, taking the steps two at a time.
Varric had been right, of course, which had been the entire point of asking him. Interfering busybodies, even those with the best intentions, typically knew what everyone else was getting into. There she was, back to the gates, in the midst of an intense discussion with Horsemaster Dennet, gesturing emphatically at the stable as she spoke.
Dennet looked up as Chance approached. "Herald," the Horsemaster greeted him with a smile, "You never mentioned the family business in your recruiting effort."
He watched Luck's back stiffen before she turned, looked over her shoulder to confirm it was him, and he came up to stand beside his sister. She had managed to compose herself into something resembling casual, a lingering tightness in the surcoat covering her shoulders revealed the truth.
"I was never exactly a part of that side of things," Chance explained with a sheepish smile, "a flaw I shall endeavour to overcome."
"One of your many," Luck muttered, under her breath.
"Pardon, my lady?" Dennet asked.
Oh, but the Horsemaster was quick, to have caught that. Chance grinned. He knew he shouldn't laugh, shouldn't feel so smug, not when he needed her on his side, but damn it was satisfying. What was that Planasene word, the one for taking joy in the misery of others?
"Just that the Herald couldn't possibly have any," she corrected, loud enough for everyone to hear, hand reaching up to grasp Chance by the shoulder, fingers digging so deeply into the cloth of his robes that it hurt, her smile that of a wildcat about to pounce.
But he was prepared, this time. He knew the anger would be there, that it was her struggling to come to terms with everything he had said, not because he had done anything wrong. This time, he had a plan to deal with it.
He smiled back down at her, "Not if you're going to help train me."
Turning to Dennet, he continued, "We could borrow two of your charges, couldn't we? I haven't ridden much since I was a child. I desperately need the practice."
With the man's consent, two of the stablehands all but tripped over themselves to saddle a pair of Forders, Chance and Luck's own Trevelyan greys having been lost at the Conclave. Chance bounced on the balls of his feet as he waited, feeling Luck silently fuming beside him. She was caught, unable to make an excuse to leave the Herald in his time of need, and they both knew it.
"Sorry, m'lady," the stablehand leading Luck's mount bowed clumsily to her as he handed over the reins. "They ain't finished makin' the saddle y'asked for yet."
"Not to worry." She reassured him, swinging herself up into the provided saddle flawlessly, then turning to pointedly watch Chance struggle to find purchase, eventually succeeding. "I will manage."
For his own part, once finally mounted, Chance nodded graciously to the Horsemaster and the two others, one of whom appeared to have become suddenly, violently ill, one hand clamped to his mouth, the other to his stomach, face rapidly turning red. "You have my permission to laugh, gentlemen."
With that, the stablehand who had been holding back let loose a tremendous bark of laughter, "Best get goin' then, y'Worship. Looks like y'need all the practice y'can get."
Chance laughed along with the rest, noting that even Luck softened for a moment before she set her horse walking down the path.
Haven was not an ideal place to learn to ride; there were few open spaces, and fewer paths. One might go up to the ruined temple, down the mountain, or around the lake. Still, it would serve for the duration.
They made their way past the gates, he on the right, she on the left, past the training grounds, and into the forest. It was much as he remembered, this business of riding. He needed practice, true, but he was not a complete novice, it was simply a question of remembering, rebuilding the skills, rather than re-learning them.
"So," he said, when he felt that they'd traveled far enough to be out of earshot, "is this where you scream in my face and then leave me alone in a darkening forest, all by my lonesome?"
She sighed, eyes closing, "I think we're a little old for shouting matches, Chance."
"But not too old for the silent treatment?" he retorted. He watched her bristle, back straight, chest swelling, like a cat puffing itself up for a fight. He smiled. For all his intentions to make peace, for what had happened earlier, his impulses were mastering him. She was so utterly predictable, so easy to provoke, to prod into reacting.
Luck looked over, caught him grinning at her. She deflated, only a little, back still poker-straight as she kept a perfect seat, but her eyes lost their hard look, the corner of her lips twitching.
"You're teasing me," she said, not quite a question, not quite a statement, a lift to the end betraying her uncertainty, unwillingness to hope after so many hopeless years.
"I might be," he shrugged.
She laughed. It had never been musical, ladylike, her laugh. It took many forms: the deep-throated chuckle that so resembled their father's, the childish giggle of a nine-year-old tearing around after her brothers, the gleeful cackle of a villainess whose plans were coming to fruition. It was hearthfires and libraries and warmth and home. It was all of these things and more and more and more, filling him up and up until he was crying, laughing, crying along with her, and past her. He sighed, chuckled ruefully, and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the wetness from his cheeks while she looked on.
"Has it been hard for you, mi carissimo?" she asked softly.
He sighed. He shrugged. He released the reins to spread his hands wide, as if to ask 'where to begin?'
She nodded her understanding, and reached across to lay her right hand over top of his left, squeezed it reassuringly.
They rode in silence between the trees, snow beginning to fall, the large, fluffy clusters of much smaller flakes bound together, in spite of the sun that still shone, it muffled the sounds of their horses' hooves. He opened his mouth to speak, frowned, closed it again. He shook his head, ran his hand through his hair. The words were there, on the tip of his tongue, but none came out. A long string of emotions, colours, a chain of need-want-feel, but no way to explain what it all meant, twisting and tangled and torturous, this process of self-expression. It used to be easier. It had been so easy to know his own mind once, before…
He could see her watching, out of the corner of his eye, waiting for him to gather his scrambled thoughts. She was patient, so patient, now. So different from when they'd been children. So different from before…
There it was. The answer, finally. How to begin. He held up his right hand, palm to the sky, fingers flicked outwards. There was a burst of frost in the palm, something to focus on as he spoke, "I'm not him anymore, Luck," he watched as the snow began to fall towards his hand, a swirl, an eddy, spinning, sparkling in the sun. "I'm not the brother you tried to save. I'm still myself. There's no one else in my head. But the Rite, what happened…"
"Changed us both," she finished for him. "I know. Between the trauma and the time that's passed, how could it not?"
He sighed, nodding, and she continued, voice thick "You are wrong, though. All those years of research, of dead ends, I wasn't trying to save the brother I remembered. I was trying to save the man he could become."
She sniffled, and he looked over to catch her watery smile. "And here you are. Without my help."
"Luck," he chided, softly. He was snow without and ice within, beat, beat, crack, his shattered heart spreading shards through his chest.
"It's all right," she blinked her tears away, "It's something I'm working towards being at peace with."
He stopped his horse, waited for her to do the same. With some difficulty, he reached across the space between them to grasp her shoulder, black eyes boring into brown. "I will always want your help, Lucky-girl. Always."
She pressed her lips together, smile tight as her eyes welled once more, returning the gesture, their arms folded over each other. "Then you'll always have it."
Notes:
Jesus but this chapter kicked my ass. I never intended for this one to exist, but I felt like things needed to be resolved between Chance and Luck before I moved forwards. So, it happened.
"If Andraste will not go to Minrathous, Minrathous must go to Andraste." Is a re-interpretation of the proverb "If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill." My mother, for reasons I cannot fathom, always said it backwards, and so did I.
Yes, Chance being made Tranquil then having to re-learn everything is my explanation for why all the spells changed from what the Warden can do to what he can do.
Yes, Varric calls Chance 'Two-step'. One of the first spells he mastered after he woke back up with the magic was Fade Step – two steps then he's gone. Hence the name.
Not sure if I made it totally clear, but at this point Chance is wearing the Inquisition Battlemage Robes, and Luck is wearing the Free Army Scout Armor, because it confuses me the least.
