Chapter 3: Let Chaos Be Undone

Now her hand is raised
A sword to pierce the sun
With iron shield she defends the faithful
Let chaos be undone

Victoria 1:3

It was so cold. In her bones this time, splintering out into the muscle around them under it ripped at her skin. The air was filled with ice, slicing against her face in the bitter wind. There was nothing around her but a frozen wasteland, littered with blackened remains of the first place she had thought to call home since she fled the Marches.

One more step, she ordered, screamed, begged herself to take. They have to be looking for you. They wouldn't leave you here to die in the snow. You have to help them. Just take one more step. One more step.

But then the snow was gone, replaced by stone slicked with rain and ichor and blood. Shaking beneath her feet, crumbling. She stumbled backward, trying to run from that unearthly green light as it devoured the fortress.

"This is who they send to best me?" the Magister, the monster whispered in her head, the sound of it thundering through her frozen bones. "A foolish little girl, frightened by the darkness? You are nothing. You affect nothing. I will peel apart this sham of a life you have built piece by piece until it is as empty as you are. Everything you love will die from your pathetic inability, and I will look upon your anguish and laugh."

The ground was gone and she was falling, falling into the light, through it, hurtling toward the–

Sera jerked into awareness at the sound of her door creaking open.

"Wuzgoinon?" she mumbled blearily, squinting to make sense of the silhouette leaning against the doorjamb. When recognition clicked in she propped herself up on her elbows.

"Tadwinks?"

"Hi," Elisabeth drawled lazily, stumbling into the room and yanking the door closed behind her.

"Thought you went off to bed," Sera yawned, sitting all the way up and watching Elisabeth as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. "Piss, what time is it?"

"Late. Or maybe early. I never know which one's right." Elisabeth hiccupped slightly at the end of the word, tripped over her own untied bootlaces.

"Are you drunk?" Drunk Elisabeth was usually hilarious, but something was off. Far off.

"In-credibly," Elisabeth replied. "I thought it might make me feel less horrible, and it did! We have some good booze here, did you know that?"

"I did," Sera answered cautiously as Elisabeth sat down heavily next to her.

"Of course you did. You're so clever." She had on a sloppy grin and stank of liquor. "You smell good."

Sera batted Elisabeth's hand away when it started to wander up her side. "No, you don't; something's off. Talk."

"Can't." The smile faltered. "Had a bad dream. You don't like dreams."

A truer statement had never been said. The last nightmare Sera'd had shook her up for days, left her frightened and angry until Elisabeth had tricked her back into sense with words that still felt too new and unreal to think of often.

Elisabeth took on a haunted look, physically withdrawing. "S'not always dreams. Loud noises do it, too. Worry every time I see a bloody spider that m'actually still in the Fade."

"Of course you're not, you prat," Sera insisted, reaching out to touch Elisabeth's arm. "It's all real out here. Really real."

"Really real," Elisabeth repeated, looking more like she wanted to cry rather than be relieved. Sera tried touching her again, running a hand up to her shoulder and squeezing.

"I can't watch you die again," she breathed out. Sera almost recoiled at the words; what a frigging disturbing thing to say, especially after talking about all the dream rubbish. When had she died in the first place? Elisabeth was the one who'd almost–

"You know how I feel about you, right?" Elisabeth said suddenly, urgently. "I didn't know it then but I do now."

"I know, alright." Sera almost grinned as she remembered the end of that night, reached up a little further and tweaked a fading bruise on the side of Elisabeth's neck. "Marked you up and everything, didn't I?"

That was supposed to make her laugh, or turn her on or something other than look over with sad, scared eyes. Piss, what was Sera supposed to do?

"Lie down," she said abruptly, pushing back on Elisabeth's shoulder. Elisabeth had barely made it from confused to a ready for it leer before Sera cut her off. "Not like that, you twat. Gotta sleep this off, yeah? You're going to feel a right tit in the morning."

"But–"

"Down," Sera ordered, pushing harder. Elisabeth's shirt rode up as she fell back, and Sera's fingers skidded over a strip of skin that was cold as ice. "Ruddy Void, how long were you outside?"

She didn't wait for an answer, getting up and walking over to her cabinet instead. Her favorite blanket was jammed up in a back corner, sheepskin and thick, soft cotton. It took one last shove to get Elisabeth all the way flat so Sera could crawl over top of her with the blanket in tow.

"Can't stop the crazy, but I'll keep your daft arse warm."

Elisabeth squirmed around a little underneath her, tried some half-formed nonsense protests, but eventually wrapped her arm around Sera and started to relax. By the time her breathing was slow and even, Sera felt steady enough to sleep again.

Elisabeth felt wretched when she woke, dry-mouthed and throbbing with hangover. It took a handful of confusing moments to orient herself, remember why her arm was soundly numb while the rest of her was finally warm.

Sera was curled up between her side and the window, blanketed and snoring softly into her shoulder. It was a rather surprising sight. Maker, she looked so young like this, so at ease, so unlike the wild girl she let the world see her as. How easy it would be for Elisabeth to lose herself in the smell of her, to be washed back to sleep on the tide of her breathing.

Someone knocked on the door then. Louder, more insistent than the wrapping that had pulled Elisabeth awake in the first place.

"G'way," Sera groaned, raising one arm in an abortive flailing gesture at the door.

"I'm sorry, Miss; I...I was told to find the Inquisitor and I can't anywhere. Is she here?"

Elisabeth twisted slightly to press her lips to Sera's hair before trying to slide out from under her as smoothly as she was able. Sera grumbled wordlessly and dragged the blanket up over her head while Elisabeth shuffled to the door.

"Yes?" she asked sharply upon yanking it open, regretting the tone almost instantly when a look of pure terror flashed over the servant's face. "I mean, what can I help you with?"

"I'm terribly sorry, milady, but the Lady Morrigan wishes to speak with you as soon as possible. Upmost urgency, she said."

Elisabeth sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Very well, thank you for delivering the message." The acerbic guilt of her behavior chewing at her insides did nothing to help the rising nausea brought on by verticality. "You're Miller, right? How's your boy doing?"

The man looked shocked and slightly in awe of the inquiry. "Much better, Your Worship. The healers say it won't be but a fortnight now before he's ready for a cane. I can't believe you remembered."

Elisabeth gave him a tight smile and dug a couple sovereigns out of her pocket. "Give him my best. And a sweet or two."

"Of course, of course. Thank you so much, milady." He bowed deeply and profusely before finally departing. Elisabeth closed the door, leaned her aching head against the cool wood before turning around.

"If you're too important to have a proper lie-in anymore, we're done," Sera mumbled as Elisabeth settled herself on the floor with her back up against the bench. The threat was somewhat diminished by the hand that wormed its way out of the blanket and mussed up Elisabeth's hair.

"I'll make it up to you later," Elisabeth sighed, leaning her head back against the muted shape of Sera's hip bone. "I've last night to make up for already, anyways."

Sera made a muffled sound of indifference and patted Elisabeth clumsily before withdrawing into to her blanket. "Come back to bed, prat."

Elisabeth could think of nothing she wanted more, but the call of duty could not be ignored. "I have to go; Morrigan needs to speak with me about something. The joys of running a small principality are boundless."

"Better you than me. She's weird. Bad weird." Sera stuck her head out of the top of the blanket and watched with bleary eyes as Elisabeth pushed herself back to standing.

"All better now? No more dream shite?"

"From your mouth to Andraste's ears," Elisabeth replied even as the memory of fear crawled under her skin, sluggish and cold. Sera looked content enough with the answer, grinned up at her sleepily.

"Good. Back soon, right? Plenty of other bed things to get up to."

"Of course." The words sounded hollow, distant. Sera's smile slipped into a puzzled frown, and Elisabeth forced herself out the door before the questions could come.

The lock clicked open at last, and Sera crowed with delight. She liked this game, the one where she and Elisabeth made increasingly over-complicated locks on all their things to challenge each other. She especially liked that she was winning now.

Elisabeth had been meeting with the pretty witchy person for donkey's years now, and Sera had reached her limit of waiting around doing nothing. Add in the weird night and Elisabeth's even weirder mood when they woke up and there was only one solution.

Pranks.

"Right, luv," she said under her breath as she closed the door behind her. "Time to cheer you the arse up."

What to do, what to do. Mismatch the shoes, maybe? No, she didn't pay enough attention to notice something like that, then her feet'd get all sore and she'd get all grumpy. Shirts, then? Ugh, no, if she showed up to one of Josephine's diplomacy thingamawhatsits in a wonky shirt there'd be no end to it. Oh! Underpants! Steal all the underpants!

"Brilliant," Sera congratulated herself as she set about the job. She shuddered when a gust of wind cut across the room from the opened door to the balcony. "No wonder you were so cold, you daft tit," she muttered, taking a detour to the closet to knick a coat. She saw Elisabeth's favorite right away, rough, sturdy wool, worn at the elbows. The sleeves hung down past Sera's hands when she pulled it on, but it was nice. Warm. Smelled like her.

Satisfied, she hurried back across the room to raid the dresser. The second drawer proved the stash, and she gleefully began to shove underpants into her pockets by the handful. Good thing she grabbed the coat, as well; her own pockets barely held a few pairs.

Something in the coat's pocket caught against her fingertips. Round, sewn into the lining. She paused, putting back a handful to free up a hand to pick at it. Took a while; it was in there.

"Ah-ha! Gotcha, bastard." The last seam popped and she pulled out her hand to reveal a ring. "What the..." Sure, it was pretty and all; plain band, reddish-gold, easy handful of sovereigns on the street. But why in the ruddy world was it sewn in Elisabeth's pocket? Was it from an old lover? Was it for an old lover? One she wasn't done with in her head? One who she thought was better than—

"Piss," Sera scowled down at the thing, swallowed up with the urge to chuck it out into the mountains at the thought. She restrained herself, barely, instead taking it up and jamming it down on her own finger to prove the point. Were it for a human's hand, it'd be too big, for an elf without an archer's scars too small and it fit her just...just right, actually. Slid down over the second knuckle and rested neatly at the base of her finger.

"Piss," she whispered in disbelief, staring at it. Elisabeth was supposed to have been joking about this. She'd laughed after she'd said it and everything.

Light flooded the room all of a sudden, stinging at her eyes. It was green, she noticed distantly. Magic green. Breach green.

She could see it then, clear as day. The Breach, the end, all of it. She ran out of the room as fast as she'd ever run in her life.

The whole keep was in chaos, the town outside even worse. Sera fought her way through the crowd as best she could manage. By the time she made it out to the stairs, the bailey was roiling with soldiers. She looked for the flash of dark hair in the sea of metal, and picked it out close to the tavern.

"Bethy!" she yelled, loud enough to hurt her throat and startle the handful of people clustered around her. Elisabeth turned towards the sound, saw Sera and started muscling her way back towards the keep.

Sera met her halfway there.

The battle was an inescapable rush of unstoppable violence. For years afterward, Elisabeth would only remember the scorched stone and searing lyrium, the black burn of running, running, the sliding tear of steel through muscle. Until that moment.

The moment where the orb flew into her marked hand as if it was always meant to.

The moment where the manifestation all her fears knelt before her in defeat.

She could feel the magic everywhere around her, thick and suffocating and uncontrollable as smoke. There was an unseen force pulling steadily upon her arm. After all that had transpired, she finally knew what it wanted of her. Unafraid, she let it happen.

Her arm jerked and locked with the Breach far above them, the choking rush of magic surging up through the connection, using her as the conduit she had been branded as at the start. It was over in an instant. Sealed forever.

The Herald's purpose, done at last.

"You want in to the Fade?" she roared, voice raw and manic as the orb fell from her grasp. The magic was still there, crackling across her palm, and she was no longer its tool.

She reached out her hand towards the monster, let her fingers catch in the threadbare Veil, and tore. He barely had time to scream before he was devoured by the light.

Elisabeth let out a single burst of disbelieving laughter before ruins in the sky began to fall, a chunk of stone cracking hard across the back of her skull as they did. She knew nothing but ringing darkness and the sickening disorientation of falling for more time than she could comprehend.

She woke to the sound of her name being called.

"Elisabeth!" she heard Cassandra say again, someone where off in smoldering rubble. "Are you alive?"

"Maybe," she managed to reply hoarsely, much too quiet to be heard over din of a mountain crumbling back to the earth. There were other voices, other variations of invocation, but only one that she wanted to hear.

"Bethy? Piss, woman, answer already! If you're dead I swear to frigging Andraste I'll–"

"You'll what?" Elisabeth called out with a grin as the cadence of Sera's steps drew closer. "I bet you don't have two arrows left after all that." Sera yelped at the sound, skidding and scrambling through the ashes until Elisabeth finally saw her.

"Ruddy frigging arsehole," she hissed as she began frantically digging Elisabeth out of the drift of debris that had settled over her. "Scared me half to death, you did. What did I tell you about running off by yourself to deal with Coryphy-shit? Don't! That's what I told you!"

Sera managed to free her after a few moments, pulling her up hard enough to bring the dull ache in her ribs into a piercing clarity. The grit that coated Sera's armor bit into Elisabeth's cheek. "We should probably tell the others, shouldn't we?" she asked wearily. Sera shook her head violently and tightened her hold even further.

"Uh-uh. I need you before they need they need the Inquisitor."

Elisabeth laughed, turned her face into the sticky warmth of blood and smoke that clung to Sera's skin.

"Love you, too," she sighed, whole, victorious, and tired enough to sleep for an age.

Morning came on slow. Might've been the surviving the end of the world thing, or the three tankards of beer she downed at the party, or the four or five hours of rolling around with Elisabeth after that, but whatever. Slow. It was nice.

Elisabeth was sprawled out half-beside-half-on-top of her, having fallen asleep not long before the sun started rising. The good kind of sleep, too; all loose muscles and deep breathing. Bruises and scrapes from the fight were just beginning to show on her arm and legs, but Sera'd made sure she wouldn't be feeling anything but good today. Done a ruddy fine job of it, too, if she said so herself.

Sera was getting a little sore, though. The arm under Elisabeth's neck prickled with numbness, and a stitch was building in her side from the weight spread across her middle. She spared a last look at Elisabeth, face mostly hidden by a mess of dark, sweat-stiff hair, and started to wiggle her way to freedom.

The room outside was colder than it should have been because some daft arsehole forgot to close the balcony door. Again. It was a good thing getting laid left Sera in such a spectacular mood, else she might've brought the blanket along with her and left Elisabeth to fend for herself. She snorted and settled for snatching Elisabeth's forgotten dress shirt up off the floor, dragging it on as she padded across the room. It was weirdly warmer by the outside, so she stuck her head out the door.

The sun was coming up behind what was left of the Breach, making the light splinter off in every direction. It was nice to look at and it felt good on her skin, so she went out the rest of the way and leaned up on the railing to watch. There was a feeling in the air, like everything was lighter than it was the day before. She'd helped make it that way.

Pretty grand, that.

She started to hear footsteps shuffling across the stone after a few minutes, smelled the squirmy-nice mix of sleep and sex and something that could have been what home smelled of as a body pressed up against her back and arms braced the railing under hers.

"Good morning," Elisabeth murmured, dipping her head to press her lips to the back of Sera's neck. It tickled.

"Morning yourself," she returned, half-heartedly trying to shoulder Elisabeth off. "Crowding me, you git."

"Too bad. You're warm." Sera giggled as the tickling started again, managing only to smush herself even closer to Elisabeth. The struggle caused the light to glint off something on her hand, and they both looked down at the same moment.

Oh, balls. She'd completely forgotten about that.

Elisabeth went stock stiff behind her. "What...how did you...I mean, I–"

"Found it in your coat, didn't I?" Sera stared down at her own hand. "You were being all sad and weird and I thought I'd sneak around and try to cheer you up. Got cold." Piss, why was this so scary all of a sudden? It was easier to look at the far-enough-down-to-kill-you ground than it was to think about turning around. She didn't want to talk about this, didn't want to ask, but she had to know. She just had to. "Were you ever going to tell me about it?"

Elisabeth was quiet for almost too long. "I didn't think you'd let me give it to you," she said finally, quiet and sad and a little ashamed. "You're not one to be tied down."

"I'm not," Sera agreed, looking at the ring again. "And I wouldn'tve. But you didn't, did you?" She swallowed hard and turned around.

"I took it. S'mine now. Like you, yeah?"

Elisabeth managed to look a bunch of things all at once, happy, worried, confused, wary. She opened and closed her mouth several times before speaking again. "Of course I am," she said, taking Sera's hand up in her own and toying with the band. "I just...I don't understand. Does this mean you'll–"

"No," Sera cut in. "Frig, no."

"But you'll stay with me?"

"Duh."

"And you're keeping the ring?"

"I like it." Sera watched the light on the metal, the look of their hands twisted together. "It's shiny." Elisabeth laughed, short and amazed.

"That doesn't make a whit of sense," she insisted, reaching up to stroke at Sera's hair. Sera just grinned, finally as far away from scared as she could be.

"Doesn't have to." She pulled Elisabeth down and kissed her the way she'd always wanted to kiss a woman, familiar and careless and like there'd be a thousand more moments just like this one.

"It's belief, innit."

The End