In which Margo has to contend with the past.
When Margo opens her eyes in the Fade, she expects some version of the now familiar dreamscape – the field of summer grasses, perhaps, or the Escher sketch staircases, or some place in Haven.
She also expects the cosmic asshole to show up, even if she doesn't admit it to herself until she's surprised that he doesn't.
But the Fade decides to defy her expectations. She finds herself in the kitchen of Baba's old house – the clay stove in the corner, with its obligatory pot of baked milk; the rickety old table, one of its wobbly legs stabilized by a box of matches; the herbs – inula and fireweed and thyme hanging in bushels from the rafters. The tablecloth, plastic sheen worn down to the underlying fabric. The pictures in the 'red corner,' where the icons would go if Baba weren't so performatively the village witch – a mixture, untenable, of communist leaders and Christian saints, of benevolent and wrathful deities harnessed from different pantheons, of chubby little figures molded of salt dough and given small offerings of milk, sugar, and cigarettes, and of the faded black and white photos of kin. All the latter, conspicuously, and somehow unsurprisingly, women. The matriline. Roots of her roots.
In Baba's view of kinship, men are an incidental abstraction.
She sits at the table, and pulls the tea kettle towards herself, giving it an exploratory sniff. It's an earthy, scraping, abrupt sort of scent – fireweed with something else, hypericum maybe, and a cold spice in the finish, like black currant leafs.
There's a cup. She pours herself some of the steaming, fragrant liquid.
"Ah. My little thistle. You have come for a visit again." Baba comes out of the bedroom, wiping her hands on her apron, hair wrapped in the usual kerchief.
Margo stills. For a split second, she suspects subterfuge – Imshael taking on her grandmother's familiar shape. But, with another look at the old woman, she relaxes. No. She would know Baba even if she forgot herself. There is no replicating her.
"Not quite as fun as calling on the wolfling, hmm?" Baba chuckles. There's a kind of mocking disapproval to the old woman's features – and an intimately familiar one at that. "Well. It's good to stop by sometimes. You can't forget where you're rooted. I was just going to start on the jam."
"Baba, what is this place? Why are you here? Are you…" Margo swallows. She doesn't know what to make of this gift that feels like a punch in the gut. She has a vivid recollection of scattering Baba's ashes under the aspen that grows at the top of the bend in the river, the bank speckled with the purple and yellow blooms of broomrapes.
"Are you real?"
The old woman considers her, a smile on her lips. Even in old age, Baba still has a kind of infectious smile, creasing the skin around her eyes in a starburst of crowfeet. It used to feel like the face of her own future, and Margo mourns the loss of that intimate, irreplaceable similarity. The only parallel left is her new body's eyes, one shade paler, a less saturated gunmetal gray – and so unlike her former body's greenish hazel. It is a small thing, but somehow, in the dream logic, it feels important that even though everything else is different, she should have inherited something of Baba's eyes.
"As real as anything is around here, my heart." Baba picks up a tub of gooseberries from under the table, and settles on a stool next to Margo, a paring knife and a miniature spoon in hand, ready to seed her harvest before she starts on the jam making. "You have forgotten your lullabies, my thistle. I have taught you better than that."
Margo frowns at the dream's strange leaping logic. But before she can ask Baba what she means, the old woman begins to hum, and Margo stills. She knows the song. Baba used to sing it to her well into her early childhood – a strange, frightening little tale with a sweet, simple, repetitive melody. Baba never sang it to Jake - her brother got all the cheerful songs. But not Margo. And, years later, she would sing it to her own daughter, for the time that had been allocated to them by whatever cosmic, ungenerous hand that's in charge of such things.
"Baby, baby, rock-a-bye," Baba sings in her cracked, old woman's voice. "On the edge you mustn't lie. Or the little grey wolf will come. And will nip you on the tum. Tug you off into the wood. Underneath the willow-root."
Margo shudders, suddenly really hearing the words.
"Baba, why do you call him wolfling?" There. That seems like the relevant question. Doesn't Imshael refer to Solas as a wolf?
The old woman shrugs. Another eviscerated gooseberry plunks into a copper pot.
"There are many names. I call you 'little thistle.' Or 'my heart.' Or 'my soul.' All are accurate. We are known by different things, none of them sufficient. Your mother called your lelek 'Margo.' Not a bad name, but not for a breath soul. Besides, the breath soul's gone now, so you don't need to worry about that." Another gooseberry joins the others in the pot. "But I name your iz. Only your iz matters, little thistle. That is where the roots grow. It's what makes us return."
Margo frowns, trying to piece together the scraps of memory. Baba had explained to her the dual soul concept when she was still very young – five, maybe, or six. She'd never questioned it before – perhaps because she'd never questioned Baba's own messy ethnic identity, somewhere between Slavic and Finno-Ugric and Rroma, and staunchly uncommitted to a single frame, or even a single language. Baba, the compulsive code-switcher. But the belief in multiple souls, she remembers from when she was roped into teaching a history of religion course by her department – outside of her area of direct specialty, but what can you do? There are versions of this scattered throughout different shamanic traditions. And yet, now she wishes she had paid more attention. She could never decide whether this concept of soul plurality was intrinsic to Baba's own beliefs, or something she had picked up somewhere along the way.
In retrospect, Baba's wild, indiscriminate syncretism – that tendency to gather everything, plants, and myths, and gossip, and mix them all together – suddenly feels like a careful practice of dissimulation. Hard to say what's hidden in the mixtures.
"Why did she name me Margo?" she finally asks. It seems like as relevant a question as any. "Did she like daisies?" she ventures.
The old woman shakes her head. "No, my soul. It has nothing to do with daisies." Another gooseberry goes kerplunk into the copper pot. "The girl took after her father, so didn't understand about pearls anyway." Baba sighs. "Sometimes it skips a generation, the knowing. It's a scattered sort of thing."
Margo wants to ask Baba what she means, but the dream vacillates, a ripple disrupting its very fabric.
"Before you go, my heart." Baba fixes her with her graphite-gray eyes. "The girl. Not a child, but forced to be one. You must help, but ask nothing from the other one. Never ask for anything. Never for anything, and especially from those who are stronger than you. And should he offer, do not accept. Some trades are too dear."
And then the dream shudders, and bursts like a soap bubble.
They set out from the hell bog earlier than expected, hoping to make the day's journey swiftly, and Margo is relieved they do not linger. It would have been nice to use the time to catch up with Evie, but a crow lands on Scout Harding's shoulder in the early morning, when the perennial drizzle isn't much more than a thick, ominous mist. It is a message signed by Master Adan, and he wants a whole collection of ingredients.
Evie and her entourage move on ahead without the rest of the scouting party. She gets a pointed nod from Varric, a quick hug from Evie, who asks her to stop by for tea later in a voice that's almost pleading.
She catches Solas's gaze on her.
"A moment of your time?" he asks, with a quick glance towards the others.
She nods, and approaches, still feeling slightly thrown by the rapid switches between formality and intimacy. At this point, almost every sentence they exchange in public feels laden with double-meaning.
"I came across this when we traveled to the Avvar's keep. The Herald thought you could put it to good use."
He hands her an old, battered journal. The paper is warped, and the writing blurry, as if the book had been water-logged a few times. Which, considering the local climate, it probably was.
She leafs through it, careful not to damage the journal further. Most of it sounds like completely demented ravings, but from what she can gather, it is also a technical manual for making a poison. Something called "tears of the dead." Apparently, even dead shit weeps, probably from too much aimless milling around in a horrid bog. And then, she realizes the darn thing needs Death Root – yes, the very death root also known as Brother Rufus's tentacled monstrosity that started this whole thing – and Margo doesn't know whether to cackle maniacally or break into sobs.
Being by and large an incorrigible optimist, she opts for the former.
"Something amusing, Lethallan?" She notes the way the smile settles in his eyes before it reaches down to his lips.
"An excess of cosmic irony" she offers. "But, thank you. This is perfect."
"It was my pleasure." Again, the subtle smile, a formal little bow, and the inescapable sense of double-entendre. And then, he turns around, and glides back towards the others.
Only Blackwall stays behind. She's puzzled at this at first, and for a time, they walk on in silence.
At some point, he clears his throat. She shoots him a look, but the bearded bear looks distinctly uncomfortable.
"Alright. You're making this awkward. Out with it."
He clears his throat again.
"You know plants pretty well, then?"
Margo shrugs. Earth plants, sure. Here, she's only scratched the surface.
"I have some sense of the practical stuff, but I'm just starting on the Alchemy path. I don't know half of what I should, and not even a hundredth of what I would like." She pauses. "What's on your mind?"
"Do you know much about… flowers?"
Margo frowns. Where the hell is this going? She pulls Aunt Ignes's compendium out of its usual pocket. It had somehow survived the Avvar's imprisonment – for whatever reason, her captors chose not to take the book from her. Perhaps they simply missed it. It is so worn from constant use that it sort of blends into the coat's lining.
"I can look something up if you want. Any specific use you need? Poison? Healing? Something else?"
He clears his throat again, and she thinks she notices a blush creeping up above the beard.
"Ahm. I suppose ornamental."
Ornamental? Aha. Margo decides the bear is actually quite endearing in his discomfort. And he just seems so profoundly decent, that she can't even bring herself to teasing him. She wonders who the lucky recipient might be.
"Ok, ornamental I'm less familiar with, but lets see if we can find something." She leafs through the book, quickly scanning the pictures. She has seen something that looked aesthetically pleasing.
"How do you feel about Crystal Grace?" She hands him the book for examination.
He takes a long look at the page.
"These are beautiful. I thought I saw something like this in the Hinterlands."
Margo shrugs.
"I haven't seen them myself, but I'm going to assume from the drawing that it's a vine. I'd add a sweetener to the water, and maybe a bit of vinegar, if the kitchen has it. Or even a few drops of a clear spirits. They'll last longer that way."
He nods. They walk in silence for a while.
"You aren't going to pry?" he finally asks.
"Nope." Margo responds. "But if you want to talk about it, you know where to find me."
A long pause.
"Thank you."
For the rest of the journey, the time Margo doesn't spend walking is occupied with stuffing burlap sacks full of material medica.
By the time they get to Haven, it's early evening. She hauls the sacks of ingredients to the apothecary, with a little help from Blackwall, but Adan is nowhere to be found – as usual. She briefly considers going to bed early, but decides against it. Her dreams feel like they require entirely too much intellectual effort, and she feels drained and unmoored, and as if she's forgetting something that needed to get done.
Margo exits the apothecary with a vague hope for a hot dinner that does not involve things that are shaped like an armadillo cross-bred with a pig and taste like bog water. The courtyard is eerily empty, and there is no light coming from inside the nearby houses. Which is why Margo doesn't notice the shadow stalking along the wall until it is too late.
Before she can so much as blink, she finds herself flat on her back, in the snow, with an unfamiliar elf's knee crushing her throat. "Well. There you are." A redhead – striking in her own way, with delicate features spoilt by a habit of professional cruelty. Margo tries to wiggle from under the woman, and away from the knee crushing her windpipe, but the elf pulls a thin, stiletto-shaped dagger, and brings it right under Margo's left eye. She stills, attempting to conserve the little breath she has left. The world begins to fade out at the edges, her ears simultaneously ringing with a high, whining keen, and full, as if stuffed with cotton.
"I don't know how you've managed to convince Leliana that I somehow put you up to it, you ungrateful little shit, but don't think that I'm going to let this go, whatever your status with the Inquisition is." The voice, which to Margo sounds so far away it is at the edge of irrelevant – like a muted TV in another room – is oddly flat, almost expressionless, despite the harsh content. With what remains of her thinking capacity, Margo concludes that this must be the mythical Charter. "But I hear you've had a whole personality change since your little improvisation at the Breach. Made yourself indispensable, did you? Ingratiated yourself with the Herald. Clever, that." The elf drags the blade of her stiletto in a vertical line across Margo's cheek. The pain cuts through the fog of asphyxiation, but it too is distant, as if it's happening to someone else. As is the feeling of something warm trickling down her cheekbone, and into her ear.
"So. Seeing how I can't just put you down like the rabid bitch in heat that you are… As you seem to think that fucking that Tevinter bastard was worth the lives of five of my people, you owe me five deaths. At my request, and to my specifications." The elf brings her face close to Margo's, and, in the absence of any peripheral vision to speak of, it is all that she can see. "Pay up, and I might consider the debt settled." And then, the redhead hacks up in the back of her throat, and spits into Margo's face.
And in the next instant, she's gone.
This chapter, as most of this fic, is brought to you by a bad case of insomnia. Also, soul dualism, which is an interesting aspect of a number of religious traditions. Here, I'm pulling out of Finno-Ugric folklore.
There is a highbrow-ish Easter Egg in this chapter. When Baba is giving Margo advice, the statement "never ask for anything..." is a citation from Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita." This is also where Margo's name is borrowed from.
Next up: More Solas and Margo, some Evie, and we meet Dorian.
As always, a million thanks for your reviews, follows, and reading eyes. A quick PSA: this fic is LONG. Right now it's clocking in at about 300k words of what's already written, and that's only Act I. So, like, if you're here and intend on staying, I'm afraid this is a long haul sort of affair. You've been warned...