Notes:
Rotating POVs and third person begin here and will continue on going forward.
First Impressions
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough
*
When Ellana wakes, it is with the type of panic she has tried for so long to stifle. Her wrists are tied – she's back in the room with the blue drapes and his face, his hands and his –
"Finally." The voice, firm, accented, feminine but low breaks her out of the memory and now she becomes aware of her limbs, tries to stand. A firm hand on her shoulder sends her crashing back to her knees.
"No. You go nowhere."
The woman's presence radiates determination and energy and her face, pale, scarred and beautiful is inches from Ellana's. "Who are you, really? What did you do at the Conclave?"
Ellana can't think, the pressure on her wrists is suffocating her, and her mind is nothing but fog and pain.
"Cassandra, give her space." A second voice and another face emerges from the shadows, a long supple form and fitted chain mail beneath blue eyes and red hair.
"Ellana, can you tell us what happened?"
"I don't know what happened." Her voice is dry and she doesn't wonder at how these people know her name. If they have her here, in chains, they know everything about her. Her notebooks, after all, were in her pack, and her pack is nowhere to be seen. She feels the blood drain from her face and her breathing becomes shallow – these people, these strangers must know more about her than she has ever told anyone. The words in her journal could not have gone unread, not when suspicion is so evident in their actions.
She looks between their faces – one an expressionless mask beneath red hair, betraying nothing, the other full of simmering rage barely contained behind dark eyes – and wishes she could take the knowledge back, wishes they knew nothing more than what they could see. An elf, slight, dark hair falling around her shoulders, braided back in places from her face. Green eyes, almond shaped and just a little too large to be human. She wishes she could be seen for who she is, not for what she has experienced.
"The Conclave exploded." Cassandra is unrelenting and her fury is palpable. Obviously, experiences trump sensory evidence in this instance. "Everyone is dead."
Ellana met her eyes then, dark green on steely blue.
"All of those people… gone?" She looks to the other woman, and the redhead nods in confirmation. "How?"
Cassandra makes a frustrated noise and wrenches Ellana up to her feet.
"Leliana, get to the forward camp. We will meet you there." They turn as the other woman disappears. "It will be easier to show you."
The breach lights the sky like so many exploding stars and it takes her moments to register what Cassandra is saying. How is that all that remains of the Conclave, and of the many delegations that sought to end the mage-Templar rebellion? Ellana listens intently until pain blossoms in her palm.
"What –" her words are cut off in a strangled cry, and she's on her knees, knives shredding along the insides of her veins as the green mark pulses. This is pain inside her, a lifeforce trying to crawl its way out of her hand and she wonders what it is Cassandra is saying. Her lips are moving but there is only roaring white noise.
This pain. They can lessen it, maybe, if they make their way to the rift. Taking Cassandra on faith, Ellana follows. The townsfolk watch closely as she staggers by, and Ellana finds herself lamenting her pointed ears, just visible under dark hair. But then, Cassandra informs her that it is more than that.
"They blame you," the taller woman states. Their distrust becomes hot on Ellana's skin, suddenly tangible; their eyes accuse, and she cannot remember if she's ever received this much attention at once.
"You blame me and they follow suit." Ellana holds Cassandra's gaze, eyes burning.
Cassandra shrugs. "You are the only survivor. If you are not responsible, who is?"
Ellana makes a frustrated noise, says nothing. The cold bites at her through her human armour, and she just wants to get this fissure in her hand gone. She can feel it, even when it is not alight, and the sensation of a presence in between her fingers is surreal. As Cassandra forges on through the gates and up the hill, Ellana follows and tries to summon the green light. To her surprise, it bends to her will, flashes forward with her wants, and recedes when she curls her fingers, wishing it gone. She slips her glove back on, an action made challenging by the metal bonds at her wrists. Metal bonds, so unlike the silken ties that held her down for days.
"Demon!"
Ellana is grateful for the distraction. More grateful still when the demon nearly kills her, if only because her brush with death brings Cassandra to her senses.
"I suppose it is foolish to keep these on." A key twists and the bonds fall away. Ellana's relief spreads through her posture and her spine straightens.
"As if they were really holding me back from killing you."
Cassandra freezes in her retreat, then looks back. Ellana smiles, and it's lopsided and so charming that Cassandra almost smiles back.
"Little elf, you couldn't touch me if you tried."
It's not long after that that Cassandra concedes that, yes, maybe some form of weapon would be reasonable given the hoards of demons that plague the valley.
Ellana's never killed a demon before. She has only one very bad memory of one. She's pleased when she discovers they die the same way men do, the only difference in the colour of the guts spewing out. She thinks back to her late night chats with Marethan; the older elf worried that the desire demon who killed her father would return. When Ellana's blade finds purchase in the swirling green mist of a demonic creature, she begins to think that maybe the desire demon should return, if only so she can hear it scream beneath her blades.
"You're not bad." Cassandra observes, and then flushes as she realises she's basically praising a suspected terrorist.
"Well," Ellana wrenches her dagger out of a demon's stomach. Observes the taller woman, her blood spattered face and blade soaked in gore. "You're pretty handy yourself."
"Enough talk." Brusque and down to business, Cassandra turns and follows.
The light in her hand surges and for a moment Ellana knows only pain. Then, as quickly as it arrived, the feeling is gone.
"Back to work," she agrees.
*
Maker's balls, he thinks as he loads a bolt into Bianca, sending it ripping through a demon poised to rend open Cassandra's back. It's like Hawke never left. The elf practically dances between the demons; she is rapid-fire a blur of steel and purpose, dodging instead of blocking because really, who could possibly pin down something that fast?
He had seen the so-called traitor only in fleeting glances. Ever-curious, he'd tippy-toed amongst the humans, trying to see above the mill of people who swarmed Haven's gate when the guards returned from the smoking temple. Damning his pride, he hopped up on a crate to get view that wasn't all backsides and drab cloth.
"Take her to Adan's hut." Curly's voice, firm and commanding and Varric thinks that he's impressed with the man, so different now from the deferent knight who simpered beneath Meredith's reign until it was virtually impossible to deny her insanity. Now he stood tall, hand on his sword, and order folks about with effortless ease.
"She's smaller than I expected." Varric mutters to the woman he knows is lurking behind him.
"We knew she was an elf." Leliana's hands are on her hips as she watches the guards follow Cullen. The elf is slight, a jumble of dark hair and ash-covered armour. Her face is indistinct at this distance.
"Still," Varric murmurs, "you'd think a blast that big would have no trouble wiping out something so small."
"Coming from a man standing on a crate so that he can see over the heads of women?"
He kicks her in the arm gently.
"Stuff it, Nightingale."
And yet he is still here, blasting the demons back into the Fade with his crossbow. And the elf that's pulling acrobatic flips as she pulls out of a demon's range is so different from that small huddle of dirt and dust that the guard's laid up in Adan's hut that he almost wonders if it's the same person. She's alive with an energy that reads in her brow, furrowed in concentration as she sweeps up and through a demon's guard, going in for an easy kill.
Varric grunts, tears his eyes away and takes out the last demon with a bolt through the throat. Or, well, where a throat would be on any normal creature anyway. He flips Bianca then, fluidly swings her onto his back and moves towards the traitor.
"Well, I'm just about ready for a snack."
But his words are lost as Solas moves fluidly to her side. He takes her wrist and her posture tenses, her mouth opening to object. But quickly, Solas brings their hands up, and the world turns an intense, shifting shade of green. Distantly, Varric thinks he hears the elf scream and then a sound like sharp thunder rips through the air and the rift is gone. Just… gone.
"Maker's balls." He's said it aloud this time. Ellana turns, pulling her wrist out of Solas' grasp. Even Cassandra is floored – all of them hoped but none of them really believed that there would be a solution. That she would be the solution
"It seems your mark is more than just a link to the Breach." Solas' voice is thoughtful. "You can bend the fabric of the veil to your will."
The traitor – or saviour? – is scanning her palm and says nothing. Could use a smile, Varric decides.
"That's all fine and dandy, Chuckles." Chuckles, he decides, is a good one for the mystical bugger, all vague assertions this and ominous portents that. "But I think we've got bigger fish to fry."
"Ellana, this is Varric Tethras. An… associate." Cassandra's hesitation brings a smirk to his lips.
"She kidnapped me and brought me here against my will."
"You are welcome to leave at any time," she turns on him, annoyance in her posture and he can't help but keep pushing her buttons.
"I would, but the view is just so lovely." He gestures to the yawning maw of emerald light in the sky, and smiles.
"If introductions are to be made," Solas' buttery voice interjects, and Varric's spared another exasperated response from the Seeker. "Then I am Solas. I oversaw your treatment after the explosion."
"And by that he means he kept you alive while that thing on your hand tried to eat you." Varric clarifies. "And kept Cassandra from killing you. No small feat."
Ellana smiles at that, looking up to meet Solas eyes. "Then I owe you my thanks. I can't imagine that was easy."
Is it just Varric's imagination, or did she peek at Cassandra as she said that? Her voice isn't what he expected. It's feminine, lilting but not accented the way Merril's had been. And she's missing the tattoos to pretty up her face with some exoticism. Varric wonders who she is, really.
He knows that Leliana has most of the answers and is working on the rest; she'd summarized the elf's pages and pages down to a two page report for the head honchos. The girl had kept a diary for Maker's sake. There's no better honeypot for a woman who needs information the way their spymaster did. But of course, Varric knows it's more complicated than that. The question then becomes – is it true? Is it part of the scheme? Did she plan this all along, write a bunch of fake backstory to build a bullshit plot for her life? Looking at her now, arms crossed as she sinks her weight into one hip, he's not sure he can imagine it.
She's got blood on her cheek, and she's attractive in an elfy kind of way, a little ethereal and a little not-so-human in the shape of her eyes, the slant of her high cheekbones. Intense eyes that remind him of Fenris, but a crooked smile that's all Hawke. If she'd written her own story, he could see why. He could certainly write a story with her at the centre.
The Breach above them howls, and suddenly she's on her knees, grasping her hand to her chest as green light plays off the planes of her face. When the light fades, Solas moves to help her stand, but she flinches back, gets to her feet on her own. Her face is drawn and sweat beads on her brow.
"We must move on." Cassandra's voice, all business. "Leliana is waiting for us at the forward camp."
"Oh good. Bianca is just about ready for some lunch."
*
Cassandra hates being wrong. She thwacks her sword into the practice dummy and then grunts in frustration when it connects with the wooden supporting post, sinks in and gets stuck. With an irritated noise, she takes her hands off the hilt and puts them on her hips, stomping towards the cliff side that overlooks the lake. Her deep exhalations mist in the cold morning air.
"Something troubling you?"
She turns and its Cullen behind her, head cocked slightly and face free from judgement. His arms are crossed over polished breastplate, and she is again silently impressed with Josephine's choice in his cloak. The reds and browns lend him a gravitas their troops need to see. She sighs. She doesn't want to talk about it. He should know better.
"She better not die." It'd been three days and Lavellan showed no sign of waking up.
"Solas doesn't think she's will die." Cullen comes to stand by her side, hands resting on the hilt of her sword. "All will be well. But you owe me a new dummy."
"There's nothing wrong with that one." As if on cue, her sword hits the ground with a thump, and sand starts to pool at the dummy's feet. She meets Cullen's hazel eyes and is annoyed to see him suppressing a laugh. "Oh, shut up."
They stand in companionable silence for a few moments. In the distance, the sun rises and paints the mountains a golden orange that's almost strong enough to distract from the dull, pulsing green of the Breach. It is so much smaller now, she realizes. Thanks to her, that little elf with her knives and her smiles.
"She didn't have to help us." Cassandra doesn't know what to think. The memory of Divine Justinia's voice, calling for help, replays itself whenever she closes her eyes. Lavellan's confused expression, her words – what's going on here?
"We didn't give her much of a choice." Cullen is generous. It is Cassandra to blame – she is the one who gave Lavellan no choice. And now she faced death.
"Don't mince words with me. This is my doing."
Cullen shifts, turns to meet her gaze directly, and the rising sun casts half his face in shadow.
"We all suspected her Cassandra. She was an easy solution to all of our questions."
"You didn't read her journals." Cassandra is shaking her head. "She couldn't have done this. I should've have known."
"Leliana's report told me enough." Cullen's voice remains even, and he doesn't rise to the emotion that so easily swallows Cassandra up. "And it also said that we can't trust what she wrote in her journals."
For a fleeting moment, she is annoyed. Damn Cullen and his damnable control. How is he so reasonable all the time?
"She didn't ask questions. Not really. Just believed me and followed when I told her that she was our only hope of closing the Breach."
"I'm sorry I wasn't up there with you." She knows what he is doing, in his irritatingly thoughtful way. Change the subject, distracting her from her self-doubt. The same strategy Josephine employed last night, as she besieged Cassandra with questions about Nevarran royalty and connections they might leverage.
"You were keeping Haven safe. Our troops needed you."
"You are kinder to me than you are to yourself, Cassandra." He pauses then, following her gaze to contemplate the frozen lake and the distant, subdued swirl of light in the sky. "Do you trust her now?"
Cassandra pauses, thinks over her life. Kirkwall's seamy streets and the thrall of Varric's words about Hawke. Leliana's assessment of city and their conversations about an Exalted March. Divine Justinia, praying for peace and inspiring dedication in the way that only she could. All of those moments, part of her history, and yet through it all, uncertainty plagued Cassandra. Did Kirkwall deserve to be purged? Did it need it, was Hawke to blame, and where was the Champion in the aftermath of the rioting? The mages needed to be watched, after all. Or did they? Even the Divine seemed unsure on that front. Each of those memories had its own special slice of doubt, Cassandra realized.
And yet when Lavellan stood up and followed Cassandra into what very well could have been their deaths, the elf had not hesitated. Had straightened her shoulders and demanded some knives. And what a swing she had. Cassandra expected little from the elf, but had learned very quickly that Lavellan's willowy limbs were laced with well-earned muscle, and that those delicate hands, so long the object of Solas' study, were practiced with a blade.
Then, while she watched Solas raise Lavellan's hand to the rift, Cassandra felt the stirrings of an unfamiliar sensation. Of something she hadn't known for a while. It concretized into a defined feeling, when they felled the demon at the temple and Lavellan temporarily sealed the Breach. It was faith, Cassandra knew then and knows now. Not faith like she has in the Maker and Andraste, but a sort of certainty that had been lacking over this past year. It was right to help Lavellan get to the Breach, to enable her to use her mark, whatever it was, to stem the flow of demons and chaos.
But did she trust her? Who was she really? Her words in the pages of her notebooks showed suffering, but they had all known suffering. Anthony for her. Cullen, haunted by his lyrium, made Cassandra his failsafe. Leliana and the trail of dead she left in her wake. Were empathy and conviction enough to constitute trust?
She opens her mouth to answer Cullen, and they are interrupted by a messenger.
"Seeker Cassandra!" The guardswoman runs over. "The serving girl says the Herald is awake."
Relief, and she feels it in every bone of her body. Relief, and then confusion again at the title the guardswoman uses. She had almost forgotten that detail, lost in her thoughts as she was.
"They call me what?" Lavellan's voice rings out in the Chantry. Her expression would have made Cassandra laugh, had the topic been less serious. But it was true – it had begun as whisperings when the guards first found her, unconscious but alive in the shadow of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. But she was still mystery then, at worst a traitor, at best, an undeserving survivor. Now she was a hero, and the townsfolk spoke the words with reverence.
"The Herald of Andraste." Leliana smirks as she crossing her arms over her chest. "They say that Andraste herself pulled from you from the fade. Saved you from the explosion."
Lavellan splutters, tries to speak and fails.
"Quite a title. How does it suit you?" She is surprised to hear a twinge of her own amusement in Cullen's words. He is sizing her up, she knows. Him and Josephine both - this is the first time they've really seen her conscious, and after all the talk, their curiosity is almost tangible.
She is glad, suddenly, that she is across the table from the advisors. The Herald, so confident on the battlefield, so cheeky in their conversations, is floundering here, and Cassandra wants her to feel supported, even if that means standing staunchly but silently by her side. This has, admittedly, been a busy couple of days for Lavellan. And if her diaries are taken to be true, she has had little recent experience amongst humans.
"It's ridiculous." She settles her hands on her hips and stares, demanding, at the advisors. "Why would Andraste want someone like me?"
Cassandra knows that Cullen doesn't understand – never has, because being raised a Templar makes you funny that way. The difference between mages and non-mages was canyons wide. The difference between human and elf was nonexistent by contrast. But Josephine hides a flinch at the implication that, even in Haven, people have been less than kind about Lavellan's heritage. Cassandra knows the diplomat is making mental notes to quell the racist slurs and hushed rumours that pervade conversations out in the training yard and mess hall.
"We do not need to puzzle over Andraste's will." Leliana, as usual, is just as quick with her words and she is on her feet. "It serves us to have this rumour spread."
"If you insist." Lavellan shrugs, and Cassandra cannot understand it. To be called the Herald of Andraste? To be signalled out for greatness, touched by divine will? How is the weight of such praise so readily dismissed? Why would Andraste choose a servant like Lavellan? That she was an elf was less important – the more important point stemmed from her journals. Her written words suggested she didn't know what to believe, that "agnostic" was a loose label that barely fit.
"We must turn our attention to more pressing matters now. We owe you our thanks for sealing the Breach, albeit temporarily." Josephine sweeps in and they begin to discuss their options. Cassandra watches Lavellan carefully, attuned to the slight pull of her eyebrows when Cullen mentions he used to be a Templar. Suspicious of her immediate agreement to travel to the Hinterlands and find Mother Giselle.
"I will accompany her." She says, both to stop the advisors' bickering and to sate her own suspicions. She looks at Lavellan, is oddly gratified when the elf flashes her a relieved smile.
Did Andraste choose you? Saved from a blast that destroyed hundreds. How could there be another answer?
But Cassandra hated being wrong, and she had already been wrong about Lavellan. She was no traitor. The elf rubbed absently at the seam along her left hand, and Cassandra wondered if it was just a quest for answers that drove her. Was that the explanation, the reason she was so willing to help their cause? Was she in search of her own answers, or something more?
Their cause. The thoughts give her pause and she knows it is time. She walks away from the conversation and pulls a tome off the shelf. This is what Justinia wanted, and what they are now able to achieve.
"The Breach might be sealed," she finds herself saying. The room has fallen silent at her actions. "But the mage-Templar war continues to ravage the country side. We have received reports of rifts all over Thedas. Orlais is mired in civil war and the Chantry flounders without a leader." She slams the book onto the war table, and the noise is louder than she intended.
"The Inquisition of old." Leliana breathes the words, but it is not to her that Cassandra appeals.
Cassandra lifts her gaze to look the elf straight in the eyes. The colour of Nevarran royalty, she thinks, and the emerald of the Herald's eyes transports her momentarily back to the robes and silks of her youth.
"Will you join us?" she asks.
Lavellan has approached the table, stands at Cassandra's side. She looks up into the taller woman's face, scans it like she's looking for something specific. Her own expression is a mask, and Cassandra feels the tension of the advisors as they wait on her response. They may not have fought alongside her as Cassandra had, but everyone in the room knows that the Inquisition needs Lavellan. Without a way to seal the rifts, how can they hope to restore order?
"You do not do this for yourselves?" She scans the room then, assesses the advisors before her gaze returns to Cassandra. "From what little I have seen of the world, it is a broken place. You would act to remedy this?"
Cassandra nods. "Thedas needs order and it needs peace."
She smiles then, and there is certainty in her eyes. Cassandra thinks that Lavellan has let her see this – that she can choose what her face communicates. Her smile is radiant, and Cassandra is momentarily surprised to feel herself smiling back.
The elf puts her hand forward, and clasps Cassandra's wrist.
"Then I am with you until our work is done."
"May you walk in the Maker's light, Herald of Andraste." As Cassandra lets the reverential words drop from her lips, she knows the answer to Cullen's question.
*
Hawke,
First off, let me tell you – this shit is weird.
And before you freak out and Fenris threatens my bloody maiming and evisceration, don't worry. I'm sending this through a secure channel.
So, about the weird shit. Well, what would you say if I told you our saviour has come? That's right. The battered little elf who survived the big boom at the Conclave is apparently the chosen of Andraste herself. I'd call it all bullshit and the running tongues of simple minds – you know all about that – except for one thing. She can close the rifts.
You heard me (or read me?). Those green swirling mist shits popping up all over the place? Spewing demons like guts coming out of a stomach wound? Knowing you, you've probably tried to fight one already. I can imagine Fenris losing his balls when he realized the demons just don't stop. Well, Ellana Lavellan, this so called Herald of Andraste, has a big green fissure on her hand, and it goes zap! And the rifts close.
I can't explain how it feels to be around her when she uses the mark. There's a jolt and light springs form her hand, connecting with the rift, fizzing until it sunders shut. It's like the Fade is tugging on your soul and doesn't want to let go. The feeling was even stronger when she connected with the gigantic Breach – the one up in the sky that you can see from every corner of Thedas. She managed to seal it, but not before we were put to work taking down hulking demon or two.
I have to stay here, Hawke. There was red lyrium all over the Temple of Sacred Ashes. And I mean all over. Whatever went down there was bad, and I have a sneaking suspicion that all that shit in the Deep Roads with Bertrand is coming back in a big way. I wanted Kirkwall to be the last of it. That damned city still hasn't recovered. I wish I could be back there.
But the Herald needs support with this shit, and I can't help but feel like I'm a part of the reason that this is all happening. I'd tell you what the she's like, but I don't really know yet. What quality time we've spent together, we spent covered in demon innards and basically trying to stay alive. She's fast on her feet and she didn't complain when the Seeker basically voluntold her to go head to head with a swirling vortex of who-knows-what. Reminds me of you. But don't get jealous – you know I've only got room in my heart for one generally fucked up crazy lady.
Anyway, for now, I'm going to tough it out with these folks. You stay underground – even if they've got a new poster child, I bet the Inquisition would have a thing or two to say to you if they knew where you were.
I'll write the next time something cataclysmic happens. Knowing my luck, that'll either be tomorrow or the day after.
Hugs and all that other stuff you hate,
Varric
