**DA:I was a long time ago, but just in case…
SPOILER WARNING FOR THE JAWS OF HAKKON DLC.
Ahem. As you were.**
Part Twenty-Three: Legacy
"Andaran Atish'an."
Somehow, Dorian isn't surprised. Maker knows he should be. To the extent history remembers Inquisitor Ameridan at all, it's as a human. To find an elf, and a mage on top of it, should shock him to his bones. Perhaps he's no longer capable of shock. Too jaded, maybe, or just too numb. Whatever the reason, Dorian feels only sadness as he scans the weary face before them, handsome and creased with care, vallaslin tracing bold lines over the hawk-like features. Dorian recognizes the pattern. Dirthamen, Keeper of Secrets.
Keeper of Secrets indeed. How might things have been different if that secret hadn't been kept? If the world had known that an elven mage saved Orlais in the midst of a Blight? The entire history of the Dalish, a history steeped in blood and oppression, would be different. Dorian has done a lot of reading about the Dalish over the past couple of months, and it's been a terrible education. He knew some of it, of course, but the extent of what the People have been through… How much of it could have been avoided, if Ameridan hadn't fallen here? Dorian's glance strays to his amatus. Maker, how this must hurt him. Dorian wants so badly to comfort him, but nothing he can say or do will make this better.
He listens as his lover explains how their people were betrayed. Watches the old hunter wilt in grief as he learns the fate of his own beloved, who died alone on a wind-swept shore. "I never wanted this job," Ameridan says. "I was needed… as I suspect you were needed." He meets his successor's gaze, and something painful and unspoken passes between them.
"I wasn't Inquisitor by choice," the younger man says. "Whatever my life was before…" He trails off, glances away.
Dorian has never heard him speak so, not even in the darkest moments, and it tears a hole inside him. You bloody bastards. Look what you've done to him. He glances at Cassandra, seeking the comfort of rage, but his anger evaporates when he sees the look on her face. She's heartbroken too, and she doesn't need Dorian to remind her of the role she played in the making of Inquisitor Lavellan.
"Take moments of happiness where you find them," Ameridan says wearily. "The world will take the rest."
It already has, Dorian thinks. His family, his future… even his name. No one calls him by his given name anymore. No one but Dorian.
At last, the spell decays completely, and Inquisitor Ameridan blows away like so much dust, freeing the dragon-god he's kept at bay for eight hundred years. The beast hits the floor with a seismic thud, but Dorian can see straightaway that it's too weak to fight them. It gathers what strength it has and leaps into the air; Dorian shields his eyes against the sudden rush of wind, and by the time he lowers his arm, the elf is on his feet again.
For a moment he just stands there, silent and silver in the moonlight, staring at the empty sky above. "Come on," he says quietly, and there's nothing to do but follow.
They spend the next few hours gathering Ameridan's memories, and it's bloody awful. Each one seeps into the elf like poison, weighing him down a little more, until he moves like a man wading through a bog. "That's enough, surely?" Dorian pleads with him at one point. "We know the truth now. We can share it with the world. There's no need to—"
"He entrusted them to me," the elf says, and that's that.
They take what they've learned to Kenric, and then it's time to rest. They'll need all their strength to fight that dragon tomorrow. But instead of turning in, the elf wanders out the gate and into the forest, gazing up at the unnaturally dark sky as if searching for answers. Dorian hesitates, unsure if he should follow. Perhaps it would be better to give his lover space, let him sort through whatever he's feeling on his own.
He splits the difference, waiting for an hour or so before heading down to the riverbank, where he finds the Inquisitor perched on a rock. The elf doesn't turn his head as Dorian approaches, though he'll have heard the footfalls from a long way off. He just stares into the water, though what he sees, Dorian couldn't say.
"Are you all right?"
Insects sing through the silence. The night creatures are so loud in this place.
"He was Dalish," the elf says.
"Yes."
"He sacrificed everything to save the world, and no one remembered him."
Dorian swallows hard, settling onto the rock beside his lover.
"The Hero of Ferelden was Dalish. She sacrificed her life to stop the Blight. And now there's me. Inquisitor Lavellan. A Dalish. What are the odds, really? There aren't that many of the People left. It can't be a coincidence, can it?" He's still staring at the water, and there's a numbness in his voice that's truly awful to hear. "Is this what we're for? Is this why we've been made to suffer for so long? So that when the time comes, we don't flinch?"
Say something, damn you. But Dorian has no answers to these questions. He can't even pretend there's no reason to ask them.
"If that's true, why isn't it part of our stories? Part of what it means to be Dalish? I would hardly expect the humans to honour our sacrifice, but we don't even honour our own. If the People are chosen to serve, to stand in the way of darkness when it comes, can't we at least wear that as a badge of pride?"
"Perhaps you will from now on. You're right, I don't think anyone has quite realized the common thread. That you're all Dalish. But when the truth about Ameridan spreads—"
"It won't matter. Because when you get right down to it, their sacrifices didn't matter."
No, no, no you can't think that way… "That's not true," Dorian says as steadily as he can. "Ameridan saved Orlais."
"Only for it to be consumed by the darkspawn. The Hero of Ferelden stopped the Blight, only for the sky to tear open and threaten to swallow the world." He meets Dorian's gaze at last. "Is that my fate?"
Dorian takes his face in his hands. "You can't think like that. You mustn't. That is not your fate."
"Don't mistake me, vhenan. I will do what's necessary, and I don't give a damn what the world remembers about me. I just…" He looks away again, his gaze falling back to the water. "I would have made different choices."
What choices? Dorian is afraid to ask.
As if sensing his lover's thoughts, the elf turns back to him. "For starters," he says, "I would have told you that I wanted you from the moment I met you. When I think of all the time we lost…"
Dorian's heart floods, and he gathers his amatus close. "We're here now," he says in a shaky whisper. "Taking our moments of happiness where we find them. That's all anyone can do, isn't it?"
The elf sighs and rests his head against Dorian's chest, and they linger in silence, listening to the chirping of the insects and the creaking of thousand year-old trees. Those same songs filled this place ten years ago, during the Blight. They filled it eight hundred years before, as an Avvar dragon circled the skies. Whatever happens tomorrow, or the day after, those songs will go on.
Dorian isn't sure why that's a comfort, but it is.
