Thank you all for reading! Special thanks to suilven for her speedy and thorough betaing!
When Alistair heard of the proposed trip to Redcliffe, he insisted on going along, although neither Lilias nor Varric seemed particularly glad to have him accompany them. He missed Redcliffe—despite his years living in the stables, he had fond memories of his childhood and the relative simplicity of those days. And somehow he hoped to find himself there, his younger self, still sure of himself and who he was … as much as Alistair had ever been sure of those things.
On top of it all, he strongly disliked having his lands yet again used by the Tevinters without his knowledge or permission. Whatever awaited Dorian, Alistair wasn't going to let anything happen to him on Fereldan soil that he didn't wish to have happen—and the best way to ensure that was the company of the King of Ferelden himself.
The people fell back as they walked through the village, hushed by the presence of their king. Some of them might remember Leyden from the Blight, as well, Alistair imagined, and be struck by Lilias's resemblance to her cousin. Although he could see the differences more now than ever—Lilias's long, springing steps in contrast to Leyden's more determined stride, for example.
Lilias and Varric had kept up a lively conversation on the journey, drawing Dorian in as often as they could, and Alistair occasionally, mostly by accident. He could tell that Lilias was nervous about this journey, as the first official work she was doing on the Inquisition's behalf. Dorian was naturally nervous about what awaited him in the inn. And Varric appeared nervous about being back in the Hinterlands, so near the entrance to the Deep Roads area where Bianca had betrayed him.
So Alistair took the lead as they approached the inn. "Dorian, do you want us all to go in with you?"
The mage shrugged, nonplussed for the first time in Alistair's admittedly brief acquaintance with him. "Perhaps not. Two's company, four's a crowd?"
Varric silently split off, finding a bench in the sun and taking out his ever-present polishing cloth.
Lilias looked uncertain as well, shifting her weight back and forth.
"I'll take him in; they know me here," Alistair told her.
She looked at him for a moment, then nodded decisively. "Yes. Good idea, thank you."
He returned the nod. Turning to Dorian, he asked, "Are you ready?"
"No; but then, when has that ever mattered?" The mage reached for the door handle.
Inside, the inn was remarkably quiet. The barkeep looked up as they entered, eyes widening as he recognized Alistair, and apparently also Dorian. He came out from behind the bar. "Lord Pavus?"
"The same." Dorian was trying for his usual breezy tone, but his nerves had his voice quavering noticeably.
"I'll be right back." He crossed his arm over his chest and bowed to Alistair. "Your Majesty."
"As you were."
"Yes, sire." The barkeep disappeared up the stairs.
Shortly thereafter, a different man came back down the stairs. The barkeep had been big, beefy, and blond. This one was slender, and elegant, and dark-haired, and looked very much like the man at Alistair's side.
"Dorian," he said.
The mage's dark skin paled. "Father." And then he reddened, his tone snapping with anger. "What was the use of the red herring about the 'family retainer'? Couldn't you have just said you were coming yourself?"
"Would you have made an appearance here had you known it was I waiting for you? It was for that reason I asked that you not be told at all."
"Yes, because it's so much better to resort to subterfuge when you wish to speak with your son!"
Alistair remained by the door, quietly. Dorian's father had yet to so much as glance in his direction, and he had no desire to interrupt the reunion unless it seemed necessary.
"I apologize for the deception. I could not think how else to draw you away."
"Why could you not simply have come to Skyhold? Oh, yes, of course, because what would people think if you were seen with the dreaded Inquisitor?" Dorian rolled his eyes. "And now here you are with the equally dreaded 'upstart King of Ferelden'."
Both men glanced at Alistair at that. He returned the looks calmly, more than used to far worse epithets than that. They weren't wrong, anyway. He was an upstart, and worse.
Dorian turned back to his father, his body tensed as if to spring. "So what is this exactly, Father? An ambush? A kidnapping? A warm family reunion?"
The elder Pavus sighed, rubbing his temples with his fingertips. "This is how it has always been. Can we not have a simple conversation without all these … dramatics, Dorian?"
Alistair couldn't believe it. Was all this just to scold the mage? Without thinking, he stepped forward. "You went through all this trouble to get Dorian here—can't you just talk to him?" They looked at him with surprise, and he shrugged, feeling awkward. "I never spoke to my father. Personally, I wouldn't waste that chance if I had it."
Dorian cleared his throat. "Yes. Good point." He looked at his father. "So, Father. Talk to me. Tell me how mystified you are by my anger."
"There is no need to—"
"There is every need!" Dorian glanced at Alistair over his shoulder. "You understand what this is truly about, don't you? I prefer the company of men. My father disapproves … to put it mildly."
"That isn't exactly news," Alistair pointed out. Everyone in the keep knew about Dorian—and most of them knew about his dalliance with Ser Barris.
"And why should it be? Why should anyone care?" Dorian shrugged. "I have no idea."
"Do not pretend to be naïve, Dorian," his father snapped. "After all the care that went into your breeding, are you truly so surprised that your mother and I found the end of the Pavus line distressing?"
"The end of the Pavus line, as you term it, has a name. An identity. As your son. A person—not a symbol or a commodity. Something you were all too willing to forget. And apparently are still happy to forget, since you felt the need to lure me here by deception rather than coming to me as a man and a father and asking me to meet with you."
There was pain in Dorian's voice underneath the anger and the studied, careful manner of speech.
"This is not the way I intended it."
"No, you wanted me to be brought here knowing nothing at all!"
"You have a duty! An obligation!"
"Yes. To myself. Not to you, not to Tevinter. I will never be the perfect leader you want; you might as well give up on me entirely."
Alistair hadn't been exaggerating how much he wished for the opportunity to talk to his father—he had longed for that as long as he had been alive, it seemed. But for the first time he saw how terribly awry a conversation could go when neither person was interested in what the other one had to say. Dorian's father wanted only to bring his son home; Dorian wanted only to air out his grievances. "You don't have to do this, Dorian," he said softly. "We can go back to Skyhold right now, if you prefer."
Dorian nodded, his eyes still on his father. "I agree. There's nothing to be gained here."
His father stepped forward. "Dorian, please, if you'll only listen—"
"No. Not after what you did." He looked at Alistair over his shoulder again. "He taught me to hate blood magic. He called it 'the resort of the weak mind'. His words exactly. But when his precious heir refused to spend his life in misery, pretending to be something he wasn't, suddenly it was no longer abhorrent and instead was a tool to use to bend my mind to his will."
"What?" Alistair couldn't believe what he was hearing. The idea was nauseating.
"Yes. He tried to change me," Dorian said. "To use blood magic to make me into … a 'normal person'. Can you imagine?"
"No. I can't," Alistair said. He wanted to throw this Tevinter magister out of his country for good.
"I only wanted what was best for you!" Dorian's father protested.
"For me," Dorian scoffed. "For you. For your fucking legacy. That was all you wanted."
"Dorian," Alistair said quietly. "Do you want to leave?"
"Yes. Yes, I do."
Alistair pushed the door open, the sunlight streaming in, a reminder of the greater world outside this dusty inn, and Dorian went past him. Following the mage, he closed the door behind them, neither of them sparing so much as a look at the man who still stood on the stairs.
They left Redcliffe as quickly as they had come. His Majesty stayed behind to make jokes for all his adoring subjects, which Varric didn't mind at all. He supposed Alistair wasn't so bad, really, but it was still hard to get past the way he had hurt Hawke, and the change that had occurred in her when the King left Kirkwall for Ferelden. Blondie's insanity had merely been the icing on the cake. Although Varric had to be fair and admit that the cake's layers were made up of the losses Hawke had suffered—her mother and her siblings and her father and her homeland—long before the King of Ferelden came into her life.
But he had made things worse, and he didn't seem to know how to fix them, and that made Varric angry on Hawke's behalf.
Hawke wasn't paying attention to Alistair, though, which Varric was glad to see. Her focus was on Dorian, who marched along pretending he was fine and not fooling anyone.
In the middle of a wide field, Dorian stopped. "You might want to step back," he said to them both without looking at them. Hastily they did so, and not a moment too soon, because Dorian proceeded to use all the magic at his fingertips to rip up the field and rain destruction down on it.
Only when he had drained himself and stood panting and sweaty in the middle of the mess he had made did Dorian turn to them, with a semblance of his usual cocky smile. "Do you think the Inquisition can be prevailed upon to make restitution to the farmer on my behalf?"
"If they can't, I will," Hawke assured him.
He nodded wearily. "Thank you. I … feel somewhat better."
Alistair had filled them in on what went on inside the inn, and in that knowledge, Varric shook his head. "If someone tried to do that to me, I think I'd have to destroy more than a field."
Dorian tried for another smile, but it wouldn't quite come. "Deep down, he's a good man, my father. He taught me that principle is important. He … he cares for me, in his way, but—he is a magister of Tevinter. As such, he won't ever change. Not on this."
"My mother was a noble of Kirkwall all her life," Hawke said. "We had to live up to those standards even though we lived in a dirt-floored hut in the middle of nowhere."
"Would she have changed you if she could?"
"In a heartbeat," Hawke said. "Well … maybe not me, but my sister. She'd have taken away Bethany's magic if there was any way to do it."
"I can't forgive him," Dorian said softly. "I won't."
"No one's asking you to, Sparkler."
"He was going to do a blood ritual. Alter my mind. Make me … acceptable. When I found out, I left."
"Does that even work?" Varric asked. He was skeptical.
Dorian shrugged. "It might have. It might also have made me a drooling vegetable. Apparently my father thought that I, as I am, was of no more value than that, so he was willing to take the risk. Unsurprisingly, I was not." He sighed. "Part of me has always hoped he didn't really want to go through with it."
"Do you think you'll ever be able to talk, to try to see eye-to-eye?" Hawke asked. She looked unhappy—Varric knew the loss of her parents weighed heavily on her.
"Your optimism is charming." Dorian mustered up a genuine-appearing smile for her. "Thank you for bringing me here. I feel better for having that behind me."
"I think you're very brave," she said softly to him. "I wish I'd had the courage to strike out on my own. I could have saved myself—and others—a lot of pain."
"You're on your own now, aren't you?" he asked her.
"I suppose I am."
"It's not easy to abandon tradition and walk your own path."
"No, it isn't."
"If you ever need an arm to hold on to in case of stumbling, you have mine," Dorian promised her.
"And you have mine."
Varric watched the two of them, feeling an odd stab of jealousy. Between Bianca's betrayal and his own guilt over Corypheus, he had clung to Hawke more than usual recently, feeling that at least they could make an attempt to recreate the old days, and seeing her forming an evident bond with someone else, creating a closeness with someone new when Varric still felt himself so very tied to the past, was a bitter pill to swallow.
When they returned to Skyhold, Dorian stalked off in the direction of his quarters and Varric returned silently to his table piled with correspondence. Alistair hung about looking as though he wanted to talk, but Lilias wasn't sure she wanted to talk to him, or if she did, what she would say, so she reported back to Thule instead.
The Inquisitor looked grave when she told him about Dorian's argument with his father, and particularly when she explained about the attempted blood magic.
"I'd have decked him," Thule said flatly.
"I'm surprised he didn't. I think he had really hoped for something better from this meeting, much as he denies it. It's hard to give up on family entirely," Lilias said sadly, thinking of her own, all irrevocably gone. She had other cousins, including Gamlen's daughter Charade, who was in Llomerryn last she'd heard, but it wasn't the same.
The Inquisitor looked at her with sympathy and curiosity, offering no opinion on the subject. Lilias realized she knew almost nothing about his background.
"You don't have a family?" she asked.
He grinned, that disarming grin he was so famous for. "I suppose that depends on your definition."
Lilias was about to press him further, just to see if he would actually tell her, but his blue eyes were no longer on her, his attention caught by something behind her.
She could hear it now, too, Dorian's raised voice and the answering tones of Mother Giselle. She turned to see them both coming toward her.
"If I wanted to play the fool, I could be rather more convincing, I assure you," Dorian snapped.
Mother Giselle looked as angry as Lilias had ever seen her. "Your glib tongue does you no credit. You cannot continue to evade the subject."
Dorian smiled, a particularly provoking smile. "You would be surprised at the credit my tongue gets me, Your Reverence."
The Revered Mother was about to respond when she saw Lilias and Thule in front of her. The Inquisitor had his arms folded across his broad chest, his blue eyes flat as chips of stone. "Oh! I—"
Thule didn't wait for her to finish. "This display is entirely unnecessary. Both of you, come with me." He led them into the antechamber between the keep and the gardens, leaning against the door to make certain no one else came in, and gesturing for Lilias to do the same with the garden door. "Now, what is this about?"
"It seems the Revered Mother is concerned about my 'undue influence' on you, Inquisitor," Dorian said.
Lilias could see hurt and resignation in the mage's mobile face, and she didn't blame him. Holding Dorian accountable for his entire country's actions and beliefs was not what the Inquisition was about.
"It is a just concern," Mother Giselle insisted. "Your Worship, you must know how this looks."
"To have the representative of the Chantry at Skyhold and one of my personal companions squabbling like children in the middle of the keep? I know how that looks."
"You might need to spell it out for him," Dorian suggested.
"The … the rumors … His presence at your side …"
Lilias spoke up. "There are rumors about Dorian? What about the Iron Bull, or Blackwall, or Alistair, or Vivienne, or me, for that matter? All of us could use our position to influence the Inquisitor … or we could, if the Inquisitor was weak enough to be influenced by whoever happened to be standing next to him, which he isn't."
Thule smiled briefly in acknowledgement of the statement's truth.
"I am fully aware of the … colorful nature of the Inquisition's makeup, but the Imperium …"
"Not everyone from the Imperium is the same," Dorian interrupted.
"I am also aware of that, Lord Pavus."
He rolled his eyes. "Kind of you to notice. Nonetheless, the opinion of the masses holds more sway with you than your own understanding?"
"It is based on centuries of evidence. What would you have me tell them?" Mother Giselle shook her head. "I do not know you, and neither do they. Thus these rumors will continue."
"Will they?" Thule asked with some interest. "How do you know?" He raised a hand. "Never mind. I would rather not know. Nevertheless, there is no cause for concern."
"You say that, Inquisitor, but … With all due respect, you underestimate the effect this man has on the people's good opinion."
"Do I? Do they know how he has helped the Inquisition? How he risked his life to come to us at Haven?"
Mother Giselle looked as though someone had just shoved a lemon in her mouth. "I … see. Pardon me for disturbing you, Inquisitor. I meant no disrespect, only to ask about this man's intentions."
"And they are nefarious, I assure you," Dorian said.
Thule frowned at him. "Not now, Dorian."
"Sorry."
Ignoring the exchange, Mother Giselle continued, "If you feel he is without ulterior motive, then I humbly beg forgiveness." She looked up at Dorian, adding, "Of you both."
She stopped in front of Lilias, who moved out of the way to let the Revered Mother proceed to the garden.
When she was gone, all three of them gave a sigh.
"Don't worry about it, Dorian," Lilias said. "She doesn't know what she's talking about."
Dorian raised his eyebrows. "She does, actually. There are rumors, and her concern is legitimate … if misplaced."
"It doesn't matter," Thule said.
"It really doesn't," Lilias echoed.
"Listen to you. It's good to be the Inquisitor … and the Champion." Dorian chuckled. "Do the rumors not bother you?"
"Why should they? I'm a Carta dwarf running the Inquisition … there will always be rumors. If not about you, then about me or about someone else in the group I've gathered around me."
Dorian looked genuinely relieved. "Good, then. I would hate to think I brought either of you any grief. I … Surprisingly enough, I've come to consider you both my friends."
Thule nodded. "I'm glad you do."
Lilias smiled. It had been a long time since she'd made a new friend.
"I have precious few to begin with, and most of them are lost to me now. I … wasn't expecting to find this here." He ducked his head, uncomfortable with his own open emotion. "You both have me at your side whenever and wherever I am needed, against anyone who opposes you." He cleared his throat and bolted through the door Mother Giselle had gone through.
Thule and Lilias stood looking at one another. "I'm sorry," she said after a moment.
He frowned. "About what?"
"I don't think I was very helpful."
"You took Dorian to Redcliffe, saw him through a personal crisis, and brought him back. You stood up for him to the Chantry, and made him feel as though he had a friend here. How much more helpful did you want to be?" He smiled. "Look, you've done a very similar job to mine, and from what I've heard, kicked some serious ass at it."
"Varric," she said deprecatingly.
"Not just Varric. You have a great many admirers. I hope you'll count me as one from now on … and I insist that you believe me when I say I'm glad to have you with me." He bowed to her and left the antechamber for the main keep, leaving Lilias to sigh and slump against the door and be glad that all that was over, at least for the moment.