It'd been a good sleep. Sera knew that right away. She knew it from the warmth in her body and limbs and the slight stiffness that meant she'd been laying still in one position for a long time. She knew it because she was smiling before she even opened her eyes, moaning satisfactorily as she stretched her legs and rubbed her shoulders into the soft bedding beneath them as pastel dawn light glowed beyond her eyelids. She remembered falling asleep the night before with Cassandra's muscled arm draped across her, holding her, making her feel like she truly meant something to someone for maybe the first time in her life. She chewed her lip and took a deep breath, wondering if it was possible to be more content than she was in that moment.

That's when she realized her hands were bound. Her eyes came open quick, narrowing down on her wrists in front of her and, sure enough, finding them tied together. "What?" She muttered, clearing her throat and sitting up in bed. She tugged ineffectively at her restraints a few times, twisting and turning to try and free herself. Her binds were secure. She frowned and readied an angry shout till her gaze drifted away from her hands and towards the other side of the cabin, where Cassandra sat at the table watching her.

"I didn't want to wake you," the seeker said with a faint smile. "You looked so peaceful, Sera."

Sera gaped at her in total confusion. "Um… Cassie? Can I ask you something, love?"

Cassandra nodded.

She raised her hands and shook them. "Why are my bloody hands tied!?"

Cassandra's smile waned and the woman took a long breath as she straightened herself in the chair. "It's time, Sera. I've… we've both been away from our duties for far too long. As interesting as this whole adventure has been… we have to go back. To Skyhold."

"Skyhold? But… what…" Sera's eyes flittered from place to place uncertainly. She was having trouble focusing on what the seeker was even talking about. When she thought she had it, she stared Cassandra's way, her face contorted with hurt. "We're going back? To Skyhold? And, and… you tied me up, so… you…"

"I can't forget what you've done to me, Sera," Cassandra answered before she could even ask. "Justice has to have its say in things. It always has, it always will. You'll be put before a trial."

Sera gaped at her incredulously. "…you're bloody serious? After everything? You're just… you're just taking me back and handing me over as a prisoner?"

Cassandra stood and paced forward with her hands on her waist. Standing beside the bed, she loomed over Sera and suddenly looked as imposing as a darkspawn. "I have to make things right. You kidnapped me, Sera. Bound me and took me against my will. Regardless of how things might've turned out… the fear and uncertainty of being taken captive like that is something that you don't fully understand. So I hope you see, I have to do this. Or things could never be right between us."

Sera clambered to her knees so she was closer to eye level with the seeker. She stuck her bound hands out and gripped desperately at Cassandra's shirt. "What if they execute me!? What if they stick me in a little cage under the castle to rot!? They're not going to take this whole thing lightly, you know!"

Cassandra covered Sera's hands in her own and squeezed. "Justice has to have its say," she repeated, nodding as a steely resolve hardened her expression.

It had been a long, long time since Sera cried, but in that moment she felt the tears close. Her lip quivered and she had to bite it to regain composure. "You and me, though… I thought maybe… after everything…"

Cassandra's fingers pressed lightly against her lips. "Don't, Sera. Don't make this harder than it has to be."

Sera looked up at her and when their eyes met, she felt those far away tears wanting to burn through her eyes again. She didn't need to worry about crying in front of the seeker for long, however. With a sigh, Cassandra reached for a strip of cloth lying beside the bed and used it to blindfold her.

"Don't put me in the dark, Cassandra," Sera pleaded as blackness blanketed everything. "Take it off. Please."

But Cassandra only tightened it, and when Sera began to plead with her again, the seeker grabbed her by the arm and pulled her off the bed. She awkwardly got her feet beneath her before she stumbled and fell, and then she was being led forward with haste. The floor beneath her socks turned from wood into grass when Cassandra took her outside and led her down the cabin stairs. "Cassandra! You don't have to do this!" Sera pleaded, but she may as well have been arguing with a stone wall for all the response she was receiving. She was marched forth till she could hear the heavy breath and clopping hooves of the horse. When they got there, Cassandra's strong arms wrapped her up and lifted her. Sera had no choice but to fumble blindly with her socked foot till she could get it over the saddle. She was shoved onto it and Cassandra climbed up behind her.

"I'm bloody sorry, alright!?" Sera shouted as her captor's arms closed in around her sides to take the horse's reigns. She wiggled her nose and shook her head to try and loosen her blindfold but it gripped her head tight and kept the world to a vague black mass before her. "I'm sorry for kidnapping you! I'm sorry for, for everything! Cassandra? At least say something!"

Cassandra's reply was a curt, "Hya!", as she spurred the horse. The creature whinnied and got itself turned aside before clopping off down the trail. By then, Sera's heart was hammering in her chest. She'd been hoping the whole thing was some sort of cruel joke or maybe even a dream up to that point, but when she felt the horse's momentum carrying them forward, carrying her to face her punishment, the bleak reality of it set in: it might be the last time she ever got to ride a horse. That notion sent a spike of fear from the bottoms of her feet up to the top of her head, and all at once she started squirming and writhing to try and get away. Cassandra's arm pinched more tightly around her sides to control her.

"No!" Sera growled, fighting more ferociously against the seeker. "You can't do this to me!" She'd spent so much of her life narrowly avoiding capture and punishment and all that other nasty stuff high-borns liked to do to little people like her, the idea that it had all finally caught up with her was making her head spin. "No!" She wailed again, but that time one of Cassandra's strong arms wrapped her torso and squeezed so she was pressed tight against the seeker.

"Be still," was all Cassandra said in to her ear, and for some dumb reason, Sera found herself obeying.

"How could you do this to me…?" She croaked, hating how weak and pathetic her own voice sounded. When Cassandra didn't bother answering, she slumped back into the woman's arms and felt defeat wash over her.

It was all bound to catch up with you sooner or late, a voice spoke inside her head. It sounded like it came from every mouth of every person she'd ever wronged in some way. It sounded like her own voice; it sounded like Cassandra's. She laid her tied hands in her lap and lifted her face. She remembered the skies were a mute grey in the brief time she'd seen them after waking up, and now she felt their condition. The fat drops of a light rain beat against her head. When it rains it pours. Whose voice was that? She didn't know; she didn't care. Despite having her back pressed to another person's, she felt incredibly alone.

They rode on for a long time like that. Cassandra seemed intent on remaining quiet and Sera found it easy enough to match her silence. The only sounds to play her through the monotony of the ride was the rain beating against the treetops and ground, and the horse's hooves clopping through what sounded like the increasingly muddy trail. She'd always had a good sense of place, even with the blindfold on, and she knew the castle wasn't very far. She remembered Cassandra claiming the previous day that she couldn't leave because she didn't know the path back. Now, clearly, Sera saw that was a lie. Maybe she didn't know it, maybe, but it wasn't hard to figure out once you got on the trail and the seeker surely had known that. She lied. How much had she been lying? Was every kind word out of her stupid mouth a lie? Sera grit her teeth and felt her skin grow hot. She regretted not just keeping the woman gagged the whole time. Then she wouldn't have had to hear any lies. Seeker of truth… Sera scoffed at the irony of that title. The woman was nothing but a seeker of bullshite. I hate her, she thought, imagining putting an arrow right through Cassandra's big lying mouth. The image made her grimace though, and she shook her head to clear it right away, feeling terrible for even conjuring it up in the first place. No, I don't hate her, she realized. But I want to hate her. Maybe I will, once I'm rotting in a prison for a few years. Maybe my pretend hate will grow real then…

The road underfoot had clearly changed. They weren't riding the flatlands anymore, they were working their way up inclined trails. That meant the end was close. Sera started fidgeting again, trying every trick she knew to escape her binds. They didn't work. Her fingers felt numb, clumsy. She couldn't even get a hold of the knot without her hands trembling. In utter frustration she gave up.

"I don't want to see you at the trial," she muttered as the horse carried them along in steady rhythm uphill. "Give your side of things and then leave when I have to do the same. If you're there… I don't think I'll be able to control myself."

Cassandra said nothing.

"I didn't like you anyway, you know. Not really. I may have thought you were attractive or whatever, but… I never liked you." Why did she feel so close to tears again? Come on! Sera demanded of herself, taking a sharp breath to keep control. She swallowed and made herself go on. "And I just used you for the sex bits too. Got what I wanted out of you. It's actually for the best you did this, because, honestly? I was thinking of ditching you soon anyway. Yep. You were going to wake up one day soon and I was just going to be gone, so…" She felt very alone again in that moment, and had to pause before her voice broke. "And if you think that-"

"Sera, stop talking," Cassandra interjected.

It had been so long since she'd heard the woman's voice, it actually caught her a bit off guard. "Why? Why should I? This is the last time you and I are ever going to speak, believe that. Might as well say something. And I just thought you should know how little you meant to me. I was using you right from the beginning. I-mmph!" a cloth was yanked tightly between her lips to shut her up. Cassandra pulled the ends together behind her head and tied them. Sera mumbled furiously into the gag for a moment till she heard how stupid she sounded and went quiet. These are our last moments together, she thought as she chewed bitterly on the cloth wedged between her teeth. Her riding horseback stoically up to the castle like some hero out of a story… and me, bound, gagged, and pissed off. It was a fitting end to their story, really. A perfect end. She hoped they kept the blindfold on her for as long as possible; she never wanted to see Cassandra again.

The inclination of the land beneath them slowly leveled off again. That meant they were in the towering shadows of Skyhold Castle. Sera swallowed a lump in her throat. Only a few stone walls separated her from the Inquisitor himself then; only a few walls between her and justice, however swift and cruel it might be.

Cassandra slowed their ascent to a trot and Sera felt them swerve off the path. Where, exactly, the seeker was taking them though, she had no idea. The ride became painfully slow and bumpy. It was clear wherever the horse was moving was not a man-made trail. They paced forth at their sluggish speed till Cassandra halted them, and Sera felt the woman dismount behind her. In the absolute quiet of the woods, she could hear the winds whipping and beating around the castle's parapets above. We're at its base? Sera wondered with a frown against her blindfold. She didn't have much time to speculate. Cassandra's hands gripped her around the waist and shimmied her off the side of the saddle. Sera went tumbling into the woman's arms, which wrapped strongly around her slim frame at once.

"Hmmf?" Sera mumbled into her gag as Cassandra cradled her and carried her forward. A loud rumbling of stone grinding against stone was the only reply she received. Then the cold rake of the winds fingers was off her skin and she listened as the seeker's footsteps echoed queerly beneath them. A tunnel? Sera thought in total confusion. Where is she taking me? Skyhold Castle had a hundred different secret passageways in a hundred different places, everyone knew that. Sera herself had spent a good deal of her time in the Inquisition looking for them, in fact. But why the seeker would be bringing her in through one of them instead of the main gates was a mystery. Either way, she was carried forward without much effort from the strong woman who'd captured her, the heat of the castle interior growing more embracing with every step. At a point, they took stairs up, flattened out, went back down some way. Then there was another long stretch of stairs that seemed to never end. Three times, Cassandra had to rest and catch her breath, Sera standing patiently in her socked feet, waiting. The twists and turns after that seemed to never end, and Sera's head spun just trying to remember every way they had come.

Then, finally, they stopped. Cassandra lowered her till Sera felt something cushiony against her butt. It was soft and welcoming and a far cry from the hard leather of the saddle she'd spent so much of the day in. Still, the seeker said nothing. She only placed Sera down and then her footsteps trailed away. For a moment, Sera was utterly perplexed. She was alone, that much she was sure of, but something was keeping her from trying to escape. It felt… wrong somehow. She just sat obediently, using the last sense she had, her hearing, to piece together what was happening. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to hear. They were definitely back inside the castle however, because she could make out the soft murmur of voices playing faintly through the walls. What is she doing with me? Was the only thought that could pierce through Sera's confusion.

After a long wait, footsteps finally returned to her. Sera sat up and tensed, eager to know what was going on. Hands moved behind her head and untied her blindfold. When it came away, she had to squint her eyes. She was in a room with bright lanterns hanging from the walls. There was a big bed with silk crimson sheets across from her, a little flaming hearth glowing beside it. A decorative carpet raced across the floor, laid under a few big oak cabinets. And there, beside the comfy seat she'd been placed, Cassandra stood over her.

The seeker pulled up a matching seat and lowered herself to sit across from Sera. The two stared into one another's eyes a moment before Cassandra took Sera's hands in her own and began gently untying them.

"I had to do that, Sera," she began with a sigh. "I hope you'll forgive me."

Sera frowned.

"When you kidnapped me, I can't tell you angry I was. My rage in that first day after you betrayed me and bound me was depthless. But it wasn't just the anger after you took me away from here. It was the fear, the uncertainty, the terror of being whisked away to a place you'd never seen, to people you didn't know… and all the while bound hand and foot with a gag kept in my mouth. You did a terrible thing to me, Sera. You understand that, don't you?"

Sera swallowed. She made herself nod, feeling she'd somehow almost forgotten how.

"I wanted you to experience it… a little of it, at least," Cassandra confessed as she finished unbinding Sera's wrists. "I don't know where you and I stand, Sera… but getting a little revenge goes a long way to being back on level ground." She stared deep into Sera's eyes. "I took care of our… situation. As far as anyone in this castle is concerned, you and I have been on a hunt these last few days. We suspected a spy had infiltrated the castle grounds, your friend Becca, in fact. We confronted her and she ran. When we followed, we didn't tell anyone because we weren't sure how deep the spies might've ran and didn't want to tip our hand." Cassandra nodded. "We tracked her two days ride away and lost her. And now we've returned. That's all there is to it."

The tears were there again, just below the surface. Sera couldn't help herself but to simply stare at Cassandra and fight them back. When the seeker smiled and leaned forward to untie her gag, Sera waited patiently for it to be out of her mouth. The second it was, she leapt forward and kissed the woman deeply. When she felt Cassandra's arms wrap around her and embrace, she finally lost the war she'd been waging with her tears; they streamed down her cheeks as the two held each other.

"You're a real arse for doing that to me," Sera muttered into Cassandra's shoulder, sniffling.

"I know."

For a while, they were both content to simply each other. Eventually, Sera broke the comfortable quiet by asking, "…what happens now?"

Cassandra leaned away and held her eyes. "I'm not sure, Sera. This whole thing has been… very strange. You made me feel ways I didn't think I could feel. But the circumstances were so bizarre, I don't think any of that counts now. The whole adventure was like some feverish dream. We can't sit here and pretend to treat any of that like it was real."

Fear, crawling up through Sera's entire body like a spider. Flashes of abandonment, loneliness, anger. Then Cassandra's hand, soft, caressing her cheek. Calmness washed over her again. "What does that mean, Cassie?"

"It means…" Cassandra took a deep breath and untangled herself from Sera's arms. Her hand moved to a little wooden table beside the chairs and slid a satchel in Sera's direction. "It means you and I have to go back to how we were before all that madness. Back before you were my kidnapper and I was just your captive." She stepped towards the bed and rested a hand against the post. "…but it also means we get to start again. Perhaps a little more… fairly this time."

Sera pulled the satchel to her and flipped its cover aside. Waiting within were rolled up scrolls of paper and a set of colored pencils. Slowly, a smile spread across her face as she realized what it all meant.

"I'd like to start with one with my clothes on," Cassandra's voice called her attention back across the room. The seeker had seated herself on the edge of the bed, playing nervously with her thumbs in her lap. "…if you don't mind."

Sera's smile broadened. She shook her head and eagerly unfolded a sheet of paper. She flattened it to the table with her palm and picked out a grey pencil to begin sketching. The lines seemed to draw themselves; her hand moving in eloquent strokes this way and that, as if guided by some supernatural force. Cassandra fidgeted and swallowed, but remained still as Sera drew her.

"So…" the seeker took a deep breath. "What do you like to do for, erm, fun, Sera?"

Sera stopped drawing and turned a bemused grin up at the woman. "Small talk?"

Cassandra sighed. "Well we have to start somewhere…"

Sera held her eyes, letting the quiet of the moment sit between them. "I draw," she finally answered with a laugh. "I've always loved drawing. Since I was a little one, you know? Funny, innit? Those things you love as a kid sorta stick with you."

"Sometimes. Not for me, mostly. As a Nevarran girl in a royal family, I was expected to dance and wear dresses. Clearly, neither activity was much for me."

Sera went on sketching. "I'm sure you had to dance once or twice, though, right? C'mon, Cassie. Spill the beans."

"Well…" color flushed in the seeker's cheeks and Sera was sure to switch to a red pencil and capture it. "There was one time, maybe. There was this boy, oh I hated him. He was always pestering me at court. Honestly, I don't think he stopped pestering me till the day I punched him in the nose." She laughed. "Back then, I punched a lot of things."

She went on talking. When it was Sera's turn, she talked herself. She ended up telling the seeker things about her past she'd never shared with anyone. It felt… good. All the while, they went back and forth like a couple of friends just getting to know one another and Sera drew on and on. The picture started rough, but it was really coming around. She had to make every line of Cassandra perfect, every inch of her: even the little crease in her brow that formed up from time to time at the bridge of her nose. And when Sera had her just right, she added a second person to the drawing, a lanky elf with straw-blond hair and a mischievous grin. Looking down at it with a smile that wouldn't fade, she thought the two looked awfully good together.

"Sera?" Cassandra's voice broke into her reverie.

"Finished," Sera said, holding the picture up. Cassandra stood and crossed the room to look at it. Slowly, a smile of her own touched her features, making her even prettier.

"It's very good, Sera."

Sera stood and laid her hands softly on the curves of the seeker's hips. "It's a start," she said as Cassandra leaned in and kissed her.

The End