"She is resilient. At a glance, I would hazard to say it is infected, although that would make no sense since it is pure magic beneath her skin. More likely, the power is not compatible with her body and she is rejecting it."
"But, we cannot-" Cassandra's mind raced; there were still so many rifts to close, still the Elder One to defeat. If they didn't have the power that flowed beneath Brynn's hand, how would they complete their task? If they continued to let the mark persist, how long until it destroyed the Herald? What was the correct choice?
"If we can get to Haven quickly, I remember reading of a remedy in one of my books. It will not completely fix this, but it should quell its debilitating effects." Cassandra nodded, crouching to pick up Brynn in her arms. She whimpered as her arm was jostled and Cassandra's chest constricted tightly. The Seeker clenched her jaw as she and Solas clumsily maneuvered Brynn onto Cassandra's stallion. She mounted behind the Herald, arm wrapped securely around the elf's middle and her mare's reins tied to her saddlebags. Digging her heels into the stallion's sides, Cassandra set off at a canter, Solas and Brynn's mare fast on her heels, the rogue making quiet hurting sounds against her chest with every rocking motion beneath her.
They finally entered the gates of Haven mid-morning two days later, having ridden their horses as hard as they dared whenever they had light. Cassandra didn't stop for the guards, merely pushing her mount through their ranks toward Brynn's cabin. She dismounted outside the door and barely caught the slight woman as she half climbed, half fell out of the saddle. Brynn stumbled into her door before Cassandra caught her around the waist and, together, they staggered into the small space. Cassandra led the Herald toward the bed and sat her on it, twisting away with a frown on her lips as Solas peeked inside the door.
"Have you settled her?"
"We shall be ready when you return, Solas," Cassandra returned tersely. He nodded and disappeared, closing the door behind him, and left them in the quiet with Brynn's rasping breaths and the faint sound of the Inquisition's people going about their business.
"Let's get a fire going; it feels like the first snow will fall here tonight." Cassandra spoke more to herself, aware of eyes on her back as she started a fire in the grate, growing increasingly angry as she listened to Brynn stop breathing, likely in an attempt to avoid making any pained noises. "Why did you not tell us sooner that you were in pain?"
"It was not serious then."
"It should have been addressed then so you were not like this now!" Cassandra rounded on her, nostrils flaring angrily as her hand cut through the air. "If you had considered how it might escalate, you would not be like this! Do you realize how important you are to the Inquisition?"
Brynn, previously reclined on the bed, suddenly sat up straight with coldly appraising eyes. She pushed herself onto her feet and swayed dangerously. When Cassandra moved to go to her, the Herald held up her palm. "This…this curse under my skin is why you keep me; if I didn't have this, I would not be treated so! Ir banal; ir u, shem! Just another dirty forest heathen to be used and discarded when my usefulness has ended!"
Cassandra stood in frozen disbelief as Brynn continued to shout at her until she was sweating and her hands shook. When she gracelessly sat on the bed, Cassandra took a hesitant step forward. Brynn fixed her eyes on the Seeker and her profile glowed sickly green as she roughly swiped her hand across her eyes. "Ir u sahlin," she said softly.
Cassandra hazarded a step, then another, until she stood by the bed. She knelt before Brynn with her hands on her knees, and found blue-grey eyes as she looked up at the rogue. "You are not some thing to be used and discarded," she said emphatically. "You are more than your title, more than your mark. You are our hope, true, but you are also a remarkable young woman, a woman who has faced immeasurable odds and triumphed over them." Cassandra pressed her hand under Brynn's chin as her head tilted down and waited for their eyes to meet again.
"I am sorry I yelled at you," she said quietly, "but I was – I remain – worried. Your health is important, not just as the Herald, but as…as a friend." She flushed under Brynn's silent scrutiny but soldiered on, feeling the press of words in her throat. "I know our initial meeting was…less than auspicious, but on every outing we have taken, we have gotten closer. I wish you would have told me of this before, but I can understand your reticence as well. I do not like to share my pain either; it is private to me," Cassandra admitted ruefully.
Brynn studied her another long, uncomfortable moment, then her lips quirked upward. Her clammy hand covered Cassandra's on her knee and squeezed weakly as she exhaled on a long breath. "Ir abelas, Cassandra, truly."
"You seem to apologize a lot to me," Cassandra teased gently.
"I have many reasons, I think. I should not have yelled at you."
"I think…you were justified. We have been pushing you more recently, and demanding things of you that any other person would balk at. Yet you do them without complaint."
"No one else can," Brynn said simply.
Cassandra stared at her, amber eyes lit with curiosity, and her scarred cheek creased as she smiled lopsidedly and shook her head. "You are a mystery, Lavellan."
"I have to keep you interested somehow, don't I, seeker?" Brynn smiled playfully, then winced as her hand sparked from within.
Cassandra rocked back on her heels as she fought down a blush. "I will find Solas, he has been absent long enough." She fled the cabin and had barely shut the door before she was accosted by Solas, yanking her aside with an impassive expression on his face. "Where have you been?"
"Listening, as is my way. She is quite upset, Seeker."
Solas' pinched expression made Cassandra suspicious and she hissed, "What did she say, at the beginning?"
"She thinks she does not matter, that she is alone here, in this human village among those who call her 'knife ear' and 'heathen' behind her back. Your faith is not hers, Seeker, your customs are not hers, do not expect her to behave as you do." Solas released her wrist and turned away from Cassandra, who growled lowly. "I must tend to her, you are welcome to watch, or you may go. I will not keep you." He pushed through the door and left Cassandra standing uncertainly on the stone step, listening to the quiet, musical lilt of Elven words on the air.
Cassandra paced the small, shadowed alcove in the dusty wing of the Chantry, leaving faint boots marks as she turned on her heel time and again. Her hair, already disheveled, became more unkempt as she carded her fingers through it again, and her brow furrowed in frustration.
"What vexes you so, my friend?" The Seeker paused midstep, watching as a shadow detached from a pillar and materialized into their seneschal, swaying silently toward her. Leliana's gaze was attentive, smile enigmatic and half-hearted as always as she approached. "Is it to do with our Herald's condition?"
Cassandra didn't bother wondering how Leliana had already heard about Brynn's illness when they had barely arrived and seen no one but the guards. "She did not tell anyone about it until she was incapacitated. What if this had occurred while we were fighting demons beneath a rift? We may not have been able to get to her in time." Cassandra crossed her arms and huffed in frustration, her ire rising as Leliana's smile broadened into something more coy. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"No reason," the redhead returned evenly, although her eyes glinted playfully. "I merely find it interesting that you take such a…personal stance on our Herald's health."
"She is the only one who can close the rifts, why would I not be concerned with her health?" Cassandra's hand cut through the air as she glared at Leliana, eyebrows lowered thunderously over her eyes.
Leliana leaned lackadaisically against a pillar and crossed her arms, staring Cassandra down with a brow raised mockingly. "I was merely commenting, now you are getting defensive. What are you hiding, my dear Seeker?"
"Nothing!"
"Are you certain?" Leliana pushed off the pillar and moved toward Cassandra, hips swaying provocatively. Cassandra took a few steps back but quickly found herself cornered with the redhead still bearing down on her, sloe eyed and hypnotizing. "You seem rather defensive for merely being concerned about the health of our de facto leader, mon amie. We've been colleagues for longer than I care to think; do recall we know much about each other."
She pressed herself against Cassandra's front, her hand flat against her breastplate and nose brushing the Seeker's cheek. She grinned against Cassandra's scarred skin as she stuttered and stammered incomprehensibly, hands fluttering uncertainly at Leliana's waist as though she couldn't decide whether to chance pushing her away or not. "You are not usually this inarticulate, Cassandra. Did I hit the mark?" She brushed her lips across the Seeker's cheek and grinned when gauntleted hands landed on her shoulder and pushed her away.
Cassandra's cheeks were aflame, her eyes gleaming with ire and confusion, and she could see the fast pulse beating at her throat. Leliana grinned and chuckled. "I think you should go back and check on her, Cassandra. She will need help until she is healed. Take her the correspondence she has missed on her last mission." Leliana melted back into the shadows and silently disappeared before Cassandra could get control of her tongue, leaving her feeling flustered and disheveled. She paced a few more moments, then cursed quietly and took off toward the cabins near the walls of Haven, unaware of the keen blue eyes watching from the shadows with a satisfied gleam in them.
Cassandra paused uncertainly outside Brynn's cabin, hands raised to knock on the door, when she heard a faint call to enter from within. She walked in and saw Brynn sitting up in bed, lips pursed as she stared at a vial she rolled between her hands. "How are you feeling?" Cassandra stopped halfway across the room, aware Brynn might explode at her again and wanting to avoid aggravating her. "Did Solas help you?"
"He gave me a potion to dull the pain," she said quietly, holding up the bottle in her hands. "He also gave me a salve to rub into my skin, but otherwise…" Brynn shrugged and winced minutely. Cassandra slowly approached the bed, pulling a stool up by it and sitting down. She set the letters she'd carried out of the chantry on the bed and Brynn's blue-grey eyes followed the motion. "What are those?"
"Letters from various people that arrived while we were gone. Leliana kept track of them for you. I believe most of them are from nobles hoping to gain recognition by siding with you, but I did see a couple that look as though they are from your clan." Cassandra watched Brynn reach out hesitantly and run her finger along the vellum, an indecipherable look in her tired eyes.
"Cassandra-"
"I must go, Herald. I will talk with you later." Cassandra abruptly stood and left the bedside. She looked over at the doorway, finding furrowed brows and a faintly hurt expression on Brynn's face. "I am…I am very busy."
She stumbled out the door and away from the cabin, making a beeline for the training grounds outside Haven. Falling into her usual position, Cassandra hit the training dummy hard with her blade, growling as the edge glanced off the wooden torso and took a chip out of the abused post. She hacked at the dummy until sweat ran in rivulets down her face and her muscles shook from fatigue. By then, the sun was nearly set and everything was shaded in shades of grey, campfires sprung up across the hillside like sparks.
She sheathed her sword, slung her shield onto her back, and let the last bit of tension leave her shoulders on a sigh. Running her fingers through her damp hair, she eyed the much abused dummy, which was rather lopsided from one too many shield bashes. She wandered toward her tent and finally removed her armor, setting it neatly aside as she dug through her sparse belongings for clean clothes.
After she had bathed and freshened up, she found herself by Varric's campfire, idly eating a hearty stew and listening to him weave a convoluted tail, surely exaggerated by her reckoning, and enthralling his captivated audience. She half listened to his gravelly voice and the gathered companions' murmurs as he reached the pinnacle of the story, the other half of her mind caught on the memory of Brynn's expression as she walked out the door earlier that day. She handed her half eaten stew off to a soldier and dusted off the seat of her breeches, leaving the warmth and light of the campfire and striding toward the cabins a ways away.
As she approached Brynn's she noticed the light that normally shone in the window was dimmed but still visible and hesitated only a moment before knocking. A long moment passed, and she thought that perhaps the Herald had fallen asleep while reading her correspondence, but then she heard a quiet call to enter, and turned the knob. The first thing she noticed as she shut the door behind herself was the scent of herbs burning in a small dish, a pleasant mixture of something earthy and spicy. The light she had spied through the window was the smoldering fire and a set of small candles on the floor across from her, and kneeling before it was Brynn. The candlelight cast a glow behind her and set her tousled hair alight, her pointed ears cast in sharp relief against her otherwise soft looking face. Eyes gleamed at her, cat-reflective and somehow more dangerous looking in the dim light, and she took a half step back. "Seeker, what can I do for you?"
Cassandra didn't miss the formal title, nor the carefully neutral expression, and took a breath. "I…wanted to ask how you were feeling."
"I am well."
"Your hand no longer pains you?"
"It is manageable."
"I…" Brynn turned away from her, back toward the candles, and Cassandra felt the sting of rejection in her stomach at the increasingly terse replies. She shrugged off the ache and took a step closer toward Brynn and, therefore, the enticing scent as well as the candles. "What are you doing?"
"Why are you asking?" Even in the dim light, Cassandra noticed the way Brynn's shoulders drew up defensively.
"I…am curious. I apologize if I overstepped." Cassandra carefully worded her answer, aware she was treading on thin ice with the woman kneeling before her. Brynn half turned toward her, her profile cast in candlelight and seeming ethereal. She looked away and her eyes found the letters sitting, unopened, on the bed. "You have not read the letters yet?"
"I…became otherwise engaged." Cassandra's brow furrowed but she let the comment pass, brushing a hand over the thick furs.
She glanced at Brynn out of the corner of her eye and watched the woman turn back toward the candles, waving her hand over the candles and inclining her head at them. She slowly stood, staring out the window the bowl with the herbs sat on, and made another gesture – index and middle fingers pressed to her forehead and extended toward the night sky – before dipping her finger into the ashes of the herbs and rubbing them on the glass. The streaked symbol, an eye with wide pupil and shadowed beneath, stood out against the otherwise pristine glass.
"What does that mean?" Cassandra blurted without forethought. She immediately cursed herself as Brynn turned toward her with a frown. "I did not mean to say that alou-"
"Then what did you mean? You ask a lot of questions for someone who isn't interested in listening to what I have to say, Seeker." Brynn crossed her arms and cocked her hip to one side.
Cassandra clenched her fist against her thigh, feeling her nails bite into her skin through the leather breeches. "I did not mean to cut you off earlier. I was…distracted, and I hurt you. I am sorry." She saw Brynn relax marginally, shoulders lowering as Cassandra's apologetic tone caught her ear, and felt a faint flutter of hope in her ribcage. "Please, will you tell me what that means?" She gestured again at the window and Brynn glanced back at it.
"It is something our Keeper would etch into the ashes of our campfire the night before we would disassemble our camp. It is for protection against predators, wisdom in our dealings with others, sight where others are blind. I…I always used to think it was meant to give us luck where we next settled, but now…" Her eyes took on a faraway cast, glowing eerily in the guttering candlelight.
"Now I think it is meant to keep us on a true path, lest we lose ourselves."