In which Margo learns that lyrium is bad for you.


As it turns out, Margo's glib prediction about life and death is perversely prophetic.

Something snags at her. Hard to say what, exactly, but the scientifically rigorous term "bad feeling" comes to mind.

Once they disengage, Margo springs into action. The alchemy of the hormonal high mixed with the alcohol converts - thank you, Unspecified Divinity - into a jolt of adrenaline. It's a muddled, tingly sensation. She can still feel the ghost of Solas's touch on her skin - an intimate haunting. But since it can't be helped, she forces her attention to narrow down to the pinprick of immediately necessary action.

She can navigate the apothecary with her eyes closed by now, and the semi-darkness is no obstacle in her ascent upstairs. She ties the string of her shorts, pulls on her trousers, and shrugs into her jacket, not bothering with other niceties. And then she's back on the first floor. Solas, damn him, looks ridiculously presentable – if she didn't know any better, she'd think he just stopped by for a lyrium potion. Even his expression is back to his habitual pleasantly polite moue. But then he looks at her, and underneath the carefully crafted mask, a brief flash of something else, heat beneath the ice. Then that's gone too, and her sudden mood must be communicative, because she can almost feel his focus hone back to scalpel-sharp precision.

She walks over to the door, the elf close on her heels, and she feels more than sees the way his gliding gait is shifting closer to a fighting stance.

Margo opens the door.

No one.

She looks down.

There is a large crumpled humanoid shape by the threshold, curled on itself in a fetal position. And, of course, she can tell right away who it is – by the absurd fur collar.

"Commander Cullen?" Margo asks, not one to neglect stating the obvious when the opportunity presents itself.

The shape doesn't move.

What the hell? Is he drunk?

Except, the bad feeling revs up.

She crouches down, and tries to feel for a heartbeat. The skin on the man's neck is unpleasantly clammy and cold as clay.

"I can't feel a pulse," Margo states, at this stage with more confusion than dread, but that's about to change.

Solas simply steps over the Commander – rather unceremoniously, all things considered, but it does get him to the other side faster – and crouches down. His fingers palpate the man's neck, in a quick, expert gesture.

"It is still there, but faint and thready. We must get him inside. Now."

Between the two of them, they hoist Cullen up, and drag him across the threshold – he is entirely unresponsive and, from Margo's estimation, over two hundred pounds of dead weight.

They set him on the woven rug in the middle of the room, because, of course, this is not a space designed as an infirmary and there are simply no other viable options. The second their patient is on the floor, Solas begins to weave a healing spell, and Margo's nose fills with the scent of ozone and the iodine twang of the ocean.

She grabs an elfroot potion from the shelf, crouches by the unconscious man, and lifts his head a bit so she can pour the liquid into his mouth. His jaws are clenched so tight she can't actually pry them open. Part of the liquid simply dribbles down his chin and cheeks, and soaks into the weave of the rug beneath.

Margo glances at Solas, and notices his grim expression. He shakes his head.

"It… He is not responding to the healing."

"How?" she asks, urgently now because in the warmth of the room, she can smell the death on him, acrid, nauseatingly sweet, and almost metallic. "What would cause the spell to fail?"

"I cannot sense anything wrong with his body. It is shutting down on its own volition."

Shit. Shit shit shit.

"Help me get the elfroot potion into him."

With Solas's assistance, she manages to pry Cullen's jaw open enough to get at least some of the potion down into his mouth. There is no swallowing reflex. Or coughing reflex for that matter. Nothing. The liquid simply spills from the corners of his lips, and dribbles down. She quickly tilts his head to the side to let the potion drain, lest they drown him in it. The man's skin is taking on an alarmingly greyish hue.

They're going to lose him. If they hadn't been fucking around and wasting precious time earlier…

"He's not breathing," Solas states, his tone clipped.

Margo doesn't hesitate.

She tilts Cullen's head back, lifting his chin away from his chest, compresses his nostrils, inhales and breaths into his mouth, hoping that enough air can get through. It's hard work, her lungs straining with the effort. She pauses after the first breath, and looks down.

It is absolutely stupid luck that he isn't wearing a chest plate. Instead, underneath the cloak, it's a simple leather jerkin, and she can see, out of the corner of her eye, his chest expand.

Another breath and she lifts up, flattens her palms against Cullen's chest, and pushes, in rapid compressions, aiming for two per second. Counts to thirty, out loud. And then does another round of rescue breathing.

Wake up. Wake the fuck up. Come on come on come on.

Then it's back to compressions again.

Distantly, she can feel Solas gather another spell. It'll be no use if Cullen doesn't breathe. If his heart doesn't start back up. She knows from experience that Solas's magic can reverse almost impossible damage, but if the body doesn't struggle to live, perhaps the magic has nothing to latch on to. There's no reviving Lazarus if Lazarus doesn't want reviving.

Then, suddenly, Cullen's body jerks, and he wheezes with his own, independent inhale.

Less than a second later Solas is pushing his magic into the prone shape, his face ethereal in the bluish glow - a phantom carved of moonlight and marble.

Margo cradles the back of Cullen's neck in the crook of her elbow, lifts his head up a little, and slowly pours the rest of the elfroot potion through his lips. He sputters, but, at length, she watches his throat work, and most of the liquid actually ends up inside rather than everywhere else.

The Commander groans, and then Margo can feel the beginning of a strange, spastic tremor. Oh no. Oh no no. She knows what this is.

He's on the verge of a seizure.

And this is where, suddenly, horribly, things click into place. The nervous jitters that night when Adan and Minaeve administered their ill-fated test. The purple circles under his eyes that never seem to go away, and that she had attributed to overwork. The sudden cardiac arrest in a man clearly at the peak of health.

But of course, none of this would have arranged itself into anything more than ominous, but random sigils if it weren't for Cullen's uncanny resemblance to her brother. And if it hadn't been for the smell. It's a different smell, but there's something about the acrid, almost chemical stench of the sweat – like burning rubber tires – that ties this night to another night, one that might as well be from another lifetime.

The night Jake overdosed.

Jake, her ridiculously talented, brilliant, always slightly unmoored brother, who picks up new skills and bad habits with equal ease, like a stray picks up burrs.

It had been a narrow thing then. He'd been clean for almost two years, but she still kept a Naloxone kit on hand, tucked away under her bed. It was stupid luck he'd been crashing at her place again for the week. It was stupid luck that the guy she'd gone on a date with had bored her within an inch of her life, and she had caught an Uber home straight after dinner, without staying for drinks, or more. It was stupid luck that it was the middle of Spring break, most of the kids had gone home or on vacation - or had already gotten most of the heavy drinking out of their system - and the little university town was down to half its population, so the roads were clear, and the ambulances were swift.

But this is not Earth. Not the quaint little artsy college town where she lived, and taught, and thought. And so, overlaying her assumptions onto this world might prove as deadly as not having a theory in the first place, even if the theory feels right.

Solas pours another wave of magic into the man who looks just like her brother, and she can see sweat beading the elf's temples. His face is deceptively relaxed, but she recognizes the effort there, in the line of his shoulders, in the way the tendons in his neck pool the shadows of the spell's glow.

Whatever he does, the impending seizure stops.

"I think he's a user," she hears herself say, watching the man of the floor settle, slowly, into much easier breathing. "What is he taking?"

The glow dims, and Solas withdraws his hands. She notices him slump back just a fraction, the movement almost imperceptible if her attention weren't so permanently, insistently tangled up in reading him, like some arcane, demanding, mind-boggling text.

"Forgive me, fenor, I do not know this expression." His voice sounds faraway and a little abstract. "But I think I understand your question." He looks at her over the body on the floor. "He is a Templar. In order to dominate mages, their Order uses lyrium to dampen magic's effects."

Of course, they do. Adan had told her as much – and she should have put two and two together. The only missing piece of information had been that Cullen was a Templar. That, she hadn't known.

"Do you think this is withdrawal, or an overdose?" she asks, hoping that the terms, despite deriving from her own world's lexis, are etymologically self-explanatory enough for Solas to pick up on the meaning.

He meets her eyes, and frowns, clearly mulling over her question. "If I were to guess, I would assume it is brought on by absence, rather than excess," he muses.

Margo nods again. "Because you felt that there was nothing to fix, yes?"

There's a fleeting flash of something close to surprised approval in his eyes, but Margo doesn't need to dwell on it for long to recognize it for what it is. She gets it. That always slightly astonishing way in which they seem to tune into some shared wavelength, even when their words – and worlds - diverge.

There is a hint of movement from the Commander, and he groans, his eyelids fluttering. "Cassandra," he rasps.

She looks at Solas.

"I will get the Seeker." The elf straightens, and before she knows it, the door is closing behind him.

Margo takes off her jacket, balls it up, and sticks it under Cullen's head in a makeshift pillow. He's back to unresponsive, but it is closer to the unresponsiveness of sleep. Either way, he's not going anywhere, and since his breathing is coming easy and deep, she trusts Solas's healing abilities enough to work from the assumption that their patient is stable, at least for now. She rushes upstairs, pulls the tunic off herself, and makes quick work of the wrappings – she has gotten fairly adept at them by now. Task finished, she gets dressed again and pulls on her boots. The whole operation doesn't take more than a few minutes. She clambers down the ladder, clears the glasses and bottle of Antivan booze from the desk, and steps outside with the cast iron pot, bracing herself against the cold.

Back in the room, she finds a few embers still glowing in the chimney, and gets the fire started under the pot, now packed with fresh snow.

Cullen stirs again, and she leaves the pot to its own devices, returning to her patient's side. "Cullen, I can help you more effectively if I know what caused this," she says, hoping she's managing to sound soothing enough.

His eyes flutter open, and his gaze, bleary at first, slowly focuses on her. "I…" - he croaks - "Andraste's Mercy, what…" He tries to get himself into a sitting position, but she puts her hand on his shoulder and pushes down gently. Not that she could keep him supine if he really put his mind to the project of sitting up, but she's hoping he'll collaborate.

"Shh. Rest. You gave us a bad scare."

He groans again. "Who is us?" His voice quavers a little. Then, a tad more firmly, but still with a good deal of alarm. "Who else knows?"

His tawny eyes start moving frantically around the room, but the effort must be straining something in his head, because he groans again, and gives up on the enterprise, letting his eyelids droop close.

"Stop trying to move around." She gets up to check on the water. The snow has melted, but it's not at simmering point yet.

"Who else was here?" There is an urgency to his question that's just one shade away from desperation.

"Me. And Solas, who helped stabilize you."

She hears a sigh. "So the apostate knows."

She turns around, and looks at him. Cullen's eyebrows are drawn together, and he is trying to maneuver himself into a sitting position again. At this point, it is clearly easier to help him than to explain why it's not a good idea. He'll probably keep trying no matter what.

She walks over, and helps him ascend into the nearby chair.

"The apostate happened to save your life," Margo remarks, voice neutral.

Cullen gives her a slightly chastised look, but then his expression changes from abashed to suspicious. "What was he doing here at this hour?"

"Picking up a potion," Margo lies without missing a beat.

"In the middle of the night?" Cullen asks. He is rubbing his chest as if something in there pains him, and Margo supposes that it probably would. She was giving the compressions her all, and despite her smaller, narrower frame, her body is deceptively strong.

"Didn't seem to stop you from coming by either, Commander," she remarks, in the same mild tone. "There's a reason Master Adan lets me sleep in here. We keep odd hours." It's a complete and utter improvisation – she's pretty sure Adan let her sleep in the rafters because he felt sorry for her - but she's not about to put up with 20 questions from a dude she just pulled from the brink of death.

That seems to give their fearless military leader pause. "Forgive me, agent. I'm being rude, aren't I?"

Margo returns to her pot of water. She waits, silent, for the water to boil and the silence stretches, uncomfortable. Finally, to give herself something to do, she assembles a tea from some available herbs – mostly on a hunch, based on the properties she's already worked with. A handful of amrita vein, mainly for taste, a pinch of royal elfroot, and a few leaves of prophet's laurel, which she's never used, but read about in Auntie's compendium. It just figures that something associated with a martyred woman would be assumed to have healing properties. Funny how things don't change from one world to the next. She still tastes the leaf, just in case, before throwing some of its brethren into the pot. It has a kind of cooling sweetness to it, somewhere between liquorish and clover blossoms. She nods to herself, satisfied.

She lets the herbs steep while she looks for something to hold the drink.

"Agent?"

"Apologies accepted, Commander," she says, ladles the tea directly into a rudimentary clay mug, and wipes the dripping liquid with her sleeve. And then hands Cullen the infusion. "Here. I'd imagine your throat feels unpleasant. This may help."

"Maker's Breath, yes. That's an understatement." He takes a cautious sip, winces, and blows on the liquid. "Agent, listen. About this..."

Before he can continue, however, the door opens, and Cassandra storms in, with Solas bringing up the back.

"Cullen. What happened?"

Margo stifles a fit of grim hilarity. She's not sure how many times this particular question has been uttered in this particular room in the last few hours. Maybe she can stencil it on a cushion later. Not that she knows how to stencil, but what's one more skill to learn for a worthy cause?

Cullen takes a look at Solas, and his expression turns stony. "I… If you permit, Seeker, we will speak of this later. Solas, Margo. I owe you a debt I hope I will be able to repay some day." He pushes himself off the chair with some difficulty. "I would like this incident not to leave the confines of this room, however. The Inquisition has enough worries as it is."

"I would advise bedrest, Commander," Solas says quietly, but he is mostly looking at Cassandra. She gives him a slight nod.

Margo watches the two file out of the apothecary, Cullen leaning on Cassandra for support. The warrior woman turns around in the doorway and inclines her head, first at Margo, and then at Solas. It could be a thank you. Or it could be a "we have an understanding, don't make me break your kneecaps." Margo decides it's likely both.

The door closes.

Solas glides up to her. He smells like snow, a hint of ozone, and wood smoke. On a whim, she encircles his waist with her arms, and leans against him, her ear against the hollow of his throat. His arms come around her in return, his chin resting against the crown of her head, and she closes her eyes with a soft exhale, listening to the sound of his heartbeat.

"I suspect this is not the last time you have to mediate Commander Cullen's predicament," he offers, tone cautious and a little tense.

Margo bobs her head up and down, unwilling to disengage. Just… ten more seconds. This feels peaceful. Not many things feel peaceful these days. "It was a close call," she finally sighs. "We…" She takes a breath, lets it out, and steps back and out of his embrace. "We shouldn't have gotten so carried away."

His eyes are on hers then, and she notes the brief flash of anger, there, and then quickly hidden.

"Do not embark on this route to self-blame, da'nas," he says quietly. "The choices he and his Order made are theirs alone, as are their consequences." She can feel the tension in the line of his shoulders, in the sudden straightness of his spine. Right. Nothing says massively pissed off like perfect posture.

She shakes her head. "Not everyone is given a choice, Solas. Sometimes, choices are made for us in advance of our capacity to do so."

And truth be told, she is not entirely comfortable with her own line of argument, but she's trying to formulate something more general about compassion – even though her words about choice taste hackneyed.

"Every new action – every time you draw your next breath - is a choice," he answers, his gaze slightly unfocused, trained on some distant, inward horizon.

"You're oversimplifying again."

His attention returns to her. He looks like he's about to take a step forward, but catches himself. "If his Order knew what you are – who you are - they would not hesitate to torture you for answers they cannot possibly comprehend, and then kill you. You owe him no succor."

"No love lost between you two, I take it?" Margo chuckles, even if Solas's words send ice down her spine.

He frowns slightly. "I do not believe Cullen to be a bad man, whatever this may mean. But I am... an apostate and an elf. Within the configuration of this world, we are natural enemies, as wolves are to sheep. It is a simple fact of nature."

She sighs. "It's not a fact of nature, it's an artifact of your world's fucked up politics." She briefly considers that she's not at all sure which is the wolf and which is the sheep, but decides it's probably better not to mention that. "Also, do you know the one about the wolf, the sheep, and the cabbage?"

He quirks an eyebrow at her. "Why do I have a feeling it will be terribly indecent?"

Margo narrows her eyes. "Apparently, because you have a one-track mind. It's actually a math riddle. A logical problem we give children to solve. I suppose I could try to make it indecent for you if you like?" She offers him a conspiratorial smile.

"Ah." His lips quirk. "Then forgive me, ma'nas. It seems that one's interpretations simply display the measure of one's own wickedness."

And at that moment, with the barely contained little smirk, he looks so entirely impish - like a folkloric trickster archetype from some Medieval woodcut - that Margo finds herself chuckling, despite the insanity of the night.

"Something amuses you, fenor?"

"You really are a special kind of bad news," she grins.

That, somehow, launches him straight into melancholy. Margo sighs. Mercurial to the marrow of his bones, as it appears.

"We can save this discussion for another night. There is the other matter of Imshael. I am having increasing difficulty joining you in the Fade - I can locate you easily enough, but you remain out of reach."

Margo nods. She had begun to suspect as much. And come to think of it, weren't most of the times that she did manage to find Solas in the Fade mediated by baba? She wonders what this could mean.

"But you clearly have a facility with shaping the Fade that makes me wonder whether…" He stops. Looks at her as if he's trying to peer inside, and then just shakes his head. "Until we are able to identify the cause of your elusiveness, you must use the skills you do possess to keep yourself safe. And if that fails, I have heard of herbs you may take to cut yourself off from the Dreaming."

Margo thinks. She had suspected there are alchemical ways to control one's connection to the Fade, but something about cutting herself off entirely feels… wrong. Or, rather, wasteful.

"I'd rather experiment a bit before I resort to the more radical options."

The elf gives her a long look. "Then be careful. I will continue to try to find you and offer guidance, if I can."

Margo nods, and rubs her eyes, which sting from lack of sleep and nervous exhaustion.

"We have an hour or so before first chant," Solas remarks, tone carefully neutral. "I can offer you a Fadeless sleep if you wish."

Margo tries to read his expression but gets nothing. The elf would be a menace at poker if he put his mind to it. "Would it require of you to stay awake?" she asks, mimicking the studiedly neutral tone.

He nods.

"Then perhaps another time. Get some rest."

He gives her a small, formal bow.

"Then I shall see you at first chant."

And for about an entire minute after the door closes behind him, Margo even manages to stay convinced that her refusal is just a matter of altruistic consideration. Nothing to do with her not trusting herself to actually sleep. Nope. Nothing like that.


As always, thank you so much for reading and leaving your thoughts.

This chapter is brought to you by a public service announcement. Stay away from addictive magical minerals. They're not good for you. Find some other way to oppress mages.

Next up: military maneuvers, more Fade stuff, and new alchemical experiments.