Again, Elven translations at bottom.

Hrmmm. I really thought this allowed strikethrough text formatting. Well...try imagining uncompleted lines are crossed out, and I'll see how I feel about it. Maybe underline? I don't know, I was really counting on that strikethrough...


Letter, Day 1

Ma vhenan,

I am not certain I write a letter so much as a book - a journal, perhaps - which borders on absurdity as I never expect you to read any of it.

Yet, it must be done. I have tried most other remedies I can think of, and none have worked, or at least none have worked well enough, and even I need some sleep. So here I am, reduced to writing down all I imagine telling you, hoping it allows me to better wall off everything I know I cannot tell you.

I suppose we may as well begin at the start of all this. How pleasant it would be if I could say that I had some indication from the beginning - or even near the beginning - of what you would mean to me. But saying so would be a lie, and telling it would defeat my purpose here.

The first time I saw you, bound in a cell while you burned with fever and the Anchor tried to devour you from the inside, I thought Cassandra had imprisoned a child. I also did not think you would live the night. How could you? No one else in this pallid age, to my knowledge, has moved physically through the Fade and survived it. You were so delicate - like a chain of flowers, I believe I once thought. Unconscious, the steel in you was invisible. I should have seen it after the first meeting you were awake for, during the desperate rush to the site of the Conclave and the Breach - and after, when you threw yourself, unhesitating, into attempting to close the rift there.

But there was no time for reflection, then, and little after as I tried to piece together what had happened and worked with Adan to, once again, save your life.

And after that, when you blushed and cast sidelong glances my way? I wish I were better than other men, but I am not. The simple truth is this: you were young and beautiful and, as I learned to respect you, I was flattered by your notice. I have never been handsome, even in my youth, and though I also never lacked for willing partners, they were more attracted to my power than to me. You did not know who and what I was, and so your interest was...unique. I didn't believe it serious, and never considered that I might be encouraging you to care for me. I thought I was only encouraging you to come back and look at me as though I existed again, without any thought for why you might see me so clearly.

Still, as I spent time in your company, I was not so blinded by my own vanity that I failed to notice, and be charmed by, your intelligence and curiosity. Your courage took me longer to recognize - at first I put it down to the recklessness of youth. Only by degrees did I come to realize there was a connection between the lore you never shrank from hearing, even when it proved uncomfortable, your compassion to those suffering souls we encountered in every corner of Thedas, and your willingness to throw yourself into any battle thrust upon you. You are even capable of admitting when you are wrong, which is perhaps the most courageous act of all. Your courage shames me, ara lath.

Never more than the night Haven was destroyed...

Why did I leave you, when you ordered me to? Cassandra and Vivienne had the civilian population to think of, but they were none of my concern. I knew our best, and perhaps only, chance lay in the Anchor bound to your hand. So, logically, I ought to have stayed and fought to protect you and it.

But.

If any chance lay outside the Anchor, it lay with me. True.

And as I am attempting to be truthful, this is also true: I valued my own life over yours. Not for my own sake as much as because I am the last of my people, and without me all hope for them dies. Though, to tell the strict truth, in the past I have valued my own life far over that of others, and the habit is not easily broken.

Yet, as we hurried from that doomed valley, I was appalled to find it was not solely the loss of the Anchor that transfixed me with fear and despair. It was not even primarily the Anchor.

It was you.

It was a thing which I could not allow to be, and so I banished the feelings to a small part of my mind, where, I believed, they would not exert undue influence over my decisions. A fine joke, I know. I believe I have learned to govern my feelings for you better in the years since, but the learning was a difficult and painful path, and I had to sacrifice your happiness to learn how to let go of all hope for my own.

In any case, imagine how I felt when you came stumbling out of a blizzard a day later, wounded from battle, half frozen from your journey - and yet alive. You will have to imagine, for I cannot tell you. All I remember is a relief so great and so crushing that it was almost as paralyzing as despair. I knew I could not see you or all the lies I continued telling myself about regaining the Anchor would crumble and float away in the joy of looking on you again. Perhaps you wondered where I was, or perhaps you were not conscious enough to notice. I suppose the latter is more likely, for you never mentioned it.

Instead of putting myself in a position where I might be exposed - to myself as much as anyone - I circled the camp at a distance, hardly knowing what I was thinking or feeling.

It was the singing that brought me back.

I watched from the edge of the camp as they bent knee to you. I saw your shoulders, already tense, bow under the burden - not of leadership, for you are the most natural of leaders - but under the weight of their faith - a faith neither you nor I could share. And you were too honest and compassionate to see what I knew - that faith is a powerful tool that can be wielded for the good of all, regardless of the beliefs held by the one wielding it. My role, then, was clear, because your courage was too great to take up such underhanded tools in any but the greatest extremes of necessity, and so I had to make you see how extreme our necessity truly was.

That was simple enough - all I needed do was call on your loyalty to your people. As it happened, I also had at hand a means to cement the faith of the masses. They needed shelter, and you gave it. They had no choice but to name you Inquisitor.

It had to be done. That much, I hope you understand.

Which brings us inevitably to behavior for which I have no defense.

I missed you, in the days after we reached Skyhold. There was a great deal for the new Inquisitor to oversee - a hundred decisions, large and small, for you to make. I told myself I had no desire to see or speak with you, that I was enthralled by the library suddenly at my fingertips, but I spent more time making up lists of books I wanted than in reading the books I had - always a sign of a mind that cannot find rest in any one course of study, usually because it wants to focus on some other.

The thrill I felt when I heard your footstep and turned to find you watching me - it made me reckless. I badly wanted to share some of the wonders of the Fade with you, and I was delighted when you agreed to accompany me. I suppose I must have counted on your obvious inexperience to keep me safe, though I gave it little thought at the time. Impulses translate to action more easily in the Fade, true, but I have better control of myself than that. I never intended to be more than one of your confidants and advisors.

I'm sorry to say that I never attempted to calculate your feelings and desires at all.

Well, as inexcusable as that admission is, experience has - or had - taught me that beautiful young women are not seriously attracted to a man with my sort of wisdom and experience, and the dour outlook that comes with them. At least not when it comes wearing a face like mine. Without power, I am easily overlooked and just as easily forgotten.

I suppose, bound up in all the other reasons I had to deny myself the pursuit of you, I also felt a fool. A man with as much experience of the world as I have has no business mistaking a playful flirtation for a real emotional attachment - or enlarging it in his own mind until he fancies himself in love with a woman who has many, likely far more appealing, prospects for romance. When you latched on to my admission of affection that night in our shared dream, you set my world spinning, and gave me no time to get my bearings before giving it another push with that kiss. Can you wonder at my inability to let you walk away?

Now I sound as though I am excusing myself. Forgive me; that is hardly my intention. Even if the kiss can be excused, what came after, in the light of day, cannot be. I had good reasons for caution - reasons I could not share, to give you a fair choice - and yet I was too weak to force myself to let you go.

So instead I lied. To you, always. To myself, when necessary.

I write this by candlelight, waiting for dawn after another restless night. By day, I am still able to wall off my longings and regrets, which makes me think that you must still think of me often, in bitterness or agony. In my dreams, spirits wearing your face dog my every step, taunting me. I know they are not you, and yet sometimes, as tonight, a madness settles on me. I reach for one, desperate only to feel you in my arms again - and then, cruelly, the spirit fades away before I can touch it.

I still have friends among the spirits, of course, but even they can offer me scant compassion in this matter. Some of them, I think, have gone to look at you themselves, but whatever they see must be a continuing indictment of my conduct, for they will not speak of it to me. The very substance of the Fade forms itself into a subtle reproach whenever I ask.

And I do ask, because I cannot do otherwise.

In a life filled with regrets, hurting you still manages to rank second among all of mine, and it has the added sting of making me feel all my greatest regrets more keenly. And yet, for all that, the question of whether or not the pain I caused both of us was worth it for me balances on a knife edge. There are nights when I lie awake, feeling I would give anything to take it all back. Had I kept the distance of hahren and da'len between us, would you have persisted? I think not, and yet my heart wants to believe you loved me that much - beyond reason and beyond propriety. No one else ever has. No one else has ever truly loved me at all. The spirits, my friends, come the nearest - but a spirit is a single-minded creature. Beautiful, pure - and too simple to fully grasp the complexity of a living being. They love as children love, and it is a treasure. But it is not the same as love between equals.

I did not know I wanted to be loved in all my harsh contradictions until you came and loved me, and then I found famine had made me greedy. That is why, other nights, I think I would give anything for one more day, even one more moment, in your arms, loved and happy.

I believe


In order of appearance. Am I going to keep translating the endearments I use repeatedly? I only just thought of it, and haven't decided. I guess...let me know if you have an opinion?

Ma vhenan: My heart/my home

Ara lath: My love

Hahren: Elder, a term of respect

Da'len: Little one, child