The very first rays of a shy winter sun shone over the Frostback Mountains and glittered on the frozen surface of the nearby lake as Haven was slowly waking up to a new dawn. The north wind that rustled through the tree needles, smelled of wet soil, fir and gossamer elfroot and brought with it the insistent calls of nugs, rams and druffalos from across the lake. It was making the smoke emerging from Jo's chimney, dance in soft swirls. Inside the cabin, the baker was already elbow-deep in supple dough, the sleeves of her cream cotton blouse rolled out of the way, her strong arms punching away at the lump in front of her. Some frizzy brown curls had defiantly escaped the bun on the top of her head, falling in front of her dark brown eyes and she was constantly flicking her head sideways in a futile attempt to take them out of the way. Tiny beads of sweat were gathering at her hairline and a splotchy flush had spread over her round cheeks and across the bridge of her freckled nose.
Her mind was once again mulling over the people leading that small part of Thedas she happened to reside in, what she objectively knew about them and her own personal, subjective opinions. Try as she might, she could never not have an opinion on the state of things. She might not care, but she wanted to know why she was not caring, she wanted to be sure that there was nothing to care for.
She had once been a soldier, and even though that was a long time ago, the mentality had never left her completely, and so, most of all, she could understand Commander Cullen and Seeker Pentaghast. They were waving Honor, Duty, and Faith like banners over the heads of everyone – something she, herself, would have once found estimable – which were all good values for the people to follow, unless they followed them blindly - something most people tended to do. He was an ex-templar, someone who – if the stories she'd heard were to be believed - knew what it meant to be misled by the ones above, driven to actions beyond ones own morality, and yet he had accepted to become a leader himself. She was the Right Hand of the Divine and a Seeker of Truth, both titles without any meaning left to them, yet she held on to them for dear life, a one-woman Order exuding the power and righteous confidence of an army. If they could actually be better, was something to be judged by History. In her core, Jo didn't believe the Commander or the Seeker would exploit their subordinates, but she had been wrong before, and people in power were often too unpredictable even for the sharpest of minds, one she never claimed to possess herself anyway.
The Nightingale was something like a shadow caused by dwindling candlelight, vague and unreadable. She couldn't place her or her motives, and that was always cause for mistrust in Jo's book. Admittedly, these exact thoughts were the qualities that made her ideal for the position she currently held, but that was beside the point. In Jo's mind, a world where someone like Leliana should exist, was a world that had failed terribly.
Even though they shared a first name, Lady Josephine Montilyet could just as well have belonged to a whole other species for how different she was from Jo. It was no secret that Jo had hated the Game from the first time she understood what it meant, and it was also no secret that people who were comfortable in It, made her uncomfortable. Pretty faces and impeccable manners concealing fatal power games that Jo couldn't begin to untangle or comprehend. Consequently, Lady Montilyet made her uncomfortable because Jo knew that, behind her sweet face and innocent-looking eyes, resided a razor-sharp mind that controlled a honey-dripping tongue, expertly honed for manipulation.
A clever tongue and a seemingly innate skill of manipulation were traits the ambassador shared with Master Tethras, though he seemed to target with these weapons the same people that the ambassador was desperately trying to appease. Someone who, even though not a person of power, was one of the highly esteemed members of the ever-growing community of Haven. He had written the 'Tale of the Champion', a book Jo had rather enjoyed reading. He was a skillful writer, but that didn't seem like an especially useful skill to have at times like these, at least not to those at the forefront. Having a fortune and friends back in Kirkwall and leaving it all behind for whatever it was they were trying to do in Haven, was another mystery added to his name. He seemed like a decent dwarf, but not that decent as to be stupidly heroic. What stroke Jo as particularly unusual about him though was the fact that, despite his involvement with every mission, he didn't quite belong with the people that surrounded him. The only times Jo had ever seen him smile, were the ones when he was bickering with the Seeker – the person that had once abducted and interrogated him, and yet the only one he apparently had a connection with.
The last one of that group was the apostate, Solas. Talk about not belonging... He was an elf, a mage, an apostate – although every mage was one these days – and a hermit by design. Jo didn't know anything about him other than what Adan, who sometimes worked with him, told her. He apparently had a vast knowledge of magic and history, the kind of knowledge that extremely few people in all of Thedas possessed, and he was always calm, but distant, an attitude she, herself, was trying to but hadn't mastered yet. She had never spoken with him, only seen him from a distance, but she had a gut feeling – an indulgence she usually did not allow herself – that they shared a traumatic experience or two... He looked like a man that had been betrayed and, as a result, lost his connection to the world around him.
All of them so different, and yet united for a seemingly common goal. Jo thought they were either fooling themselves or each other and the 'common folk' that looked up to them for solutions and, even, hope. Were they so blind that they couldn't see that the world they were trying to save was already so corrupt that even without the darkspawn and the demons, the people were already doing an excellent job of torturing each other? Some of 'them' were even the ones doing or having done the torturing. And yet, they still lived with themselves, they still lead others, they still felt worthy of being followed.
Lost in thought, her hands had stopped kneading, and a light knock on her door made Jo jump.
"It's open!" she shouted, a bit louder than was warranted.
A young elf, barely out of adolescence, with cropped wavy hair and an impressively square jawline walked through the door and immediately bowed politely.
"Good morning Mistress Reed! I di-"
"Jo," said the baker attempting to wipe her hands on her soiled apron. It proved ineffective.
"As you wish Mistress Jo!" Jo exhaled through her nose. "I didn't mean to interrupt! But Lady Cassandra sent me to get a pie and a loaf for the Herald. 'At once,' she said!" she uttered barely pausing for breath.
"Calm down, child!" Jo scolded her. "They're not ready yet, and I have other orders as well, so the Herald shall have to wait."
"B-but 'at on-" the young elf tried to remind her.
"Go, I'm sure you have other things to do and so have I. Once I'm done with the other deliveries, I'll bring them to the Herald myself." And, after a small pause, she added curtly, her tone leaving no room for objection: "If the Lady Seeker wants them 'at once', she can bake them herself or notify me in advance next time."
ooOoo
About an hour later, Jo was knocking on the Herald's door with a towel-covered basket hanging from her elbow.
No response.
She knocked harder.
"I said I'll go!' a gravelly female voice yelled from inside.
Jo opened the door and came face to face with a disheveled woman that was, presumably, the Herald. She was wearing pale, almost white, knee-high boots with pointy golden tips, dark gray leather pants, a stark white blouse and was currently in the process of donning an incredibly ornate armor with the same dark gray and off-white leather and golden scales and tips. She stopped with one arm through a golden dragon scale mail sleeve, the other through the wide neckline and her head peaking under a pointy patch of metal-tipped leather. Her hair was the palest blond, tied in a messy bun – not unlike Jo's – and she was flushed. Her face was angular, harsh and full of scars, some old and lighter than her ivory skin, and some still an angry red. Tiny nicks were marring her thick – some could say too thick – rosy lips and a particularly deep slash run from her narrow forehead, through a bushy eyebrow and, jumping over a hooded olive eye, continued onto a sharp cheekbone, across the plane of her cheek and ended at her carved jawline. Even through the tangled mess of limbs, leather and cloth, her build was impressive, tall and muscular, far from the "uppity Free Marcher broad " image Flissa had previously painted.
"Well, fuck me, that woman is a warrior. If Andraste sent this person, then I might start believing," Jo thought, barely able to suppress a smirk.
The Herald frowned. "And who are you exactly?" she asked.
Jo rolled back the towel covering the basket to reveal a steaming loaf of bread and two neatly crimped pies. The Herald's eyes widened. "Seeker Pentaghast thought you might be hungry after sleeping for as long as you did, Herald," she said and wrapped the goods with the towel and placed it on the table by the bed. "Need help with that?" she asked eying the armor.
The other woman scowled, eyed her angrily, but in the end just exhaled and closed her eyes. "Yes," she admitted.
"No moronic sense of pride then," Joe thought. "Good."
"They gave me this to wear like I'm some kind of... of... well, not me. And this thing certainly doesn't help," she said wiggling the fingers of her right hand which was trapped above her head. Jo for the first time noticed the Mark. From what Adan had told her, she expected a bright green light, but what she saw was the Herald's palm cracked like porcelain, and from the cracks a faint glow. Truthfully, it looked painful. "Name's Evelyn," she said, obviously wanting Jo to stop staring at her hand.
"Jo," she answered as she walked towards her and pulled the armor off of the Herald.
The only sounds that came out of their mouths for as long it took Evelyn to don the unnecessarily complicated armor with Jo's help, were scoffs, huffs and muffled curses.
"Does it hurt?" Jo asked her as she was finally tying the orange sash around the Herald's waist.
It took Evelyn a while to understand what she was talking about. She chuckled and flexed her now gauntleted hand. "Not as much as when I woke up after the explosion. But it could have been the handcuffs, I'm not sure," she said. Jo chuckled in return at the biting remark.
"All done," Jo said.
"Thank you."
"I don't think you're in a position to thank anyone anymore. From what I've heard, we should all thank you for the rest of our days."
Instead of a reply, Jo saw a darkness she couldn't place spread in the other woman's face. It could be guilt, it could be weariness, it could be something else entirely, but the sure thing was that it surprised her.
"Don't worry, you won't see any gratitude from me, that I can promise you," Jo tried to soften her previous biting remark.
"Thank the Maker!" exclaimed the Herald humorously, some of that darkness still in her eyes. "Now, tell me, when did you learn to buckle armor?" she asked sitting stiffly on the bed with one of the pies in her hands.
Jo's smile faded. "I wasn't always a baker. I was once young and stupid."
"'Young'? How old are you then? Thirty-four, thirty-five? You don't seem older than me."
"Thirty-seven in a month," Jo answered. She was standing stock-still with her hands clasped behind her back, eyes focused straight ahead.
"Mhm," the Herald nodded and chewed on a corner of the loaf. "And where did you serve?"
"Denerim."
"So you fought in the Blight?" she asked and looked at Jo.
She didn't – couldn't – answer. Despite the cold of the Frostbacks, she could feel the heat rising to her head, her nails dug in the heel of her palm, her jaw sore from gritting her teeth.
"It was made abundantly clear that the Seeker is waiting for me. Thank you for your help, Jo. And for this," Evelyn said raising the bread, a small smile stretching her lips.
Jo gave a curt nod and bolted outside the door, shoving the gathering crowd that blocked her way to her home, to safety.
ooOoo
After that day, life in Haven seemed to go on as normal – minus the swirling vortex overhead. The Herald was roaming around the village talking to everyone, helping out in every little way she could, even if it meant not sleeping or eating properly. Jo couldn't help but be amazed. She did not expect that kind of behavior from someone that found themselves in that kind of position. Deep inside she almost hoped that the power Evelyn now had would go into her head and turn her into the kind of person Jo was used to, someone with no regard for anyone else than their own endgame. She could see though that she wasn't like that, she cared, and not with the dignified but detached manner some of her peers had, separating them from the 'common folk', she cared personally for everyone she came to contact with. This was admirable beyond compare, and made Jo wander.
"What if I was in her place? What if I, by mistake, or fate, or divine plan, happened to become the one with the Mark capable of saving all?"
She tried to think beyond the instant fear clawing at her throat. She tried to think beyond the years of indifference she'd conditioned herself to reside in. She even tried to think beyond her own logic, telling her that she never was and ever will be that important. What she found at that place, beyond everything she had forced herself to become and, as a result, had become accustomed to after the Blight, scared her. She hadn't permitted herself to go there for so long, and it was desolate now. What remained was ruins of who she used to be, a young woman of twenty-six, wanting to do good, fight for everyone that couldn't and, through the terror of that prospect, still someone with the ability to find happiness inside and around her.
Jo angrily wiped at her eyes. Happiness was a foreign concept. It was so alien to her that she didn't even hope for it anymore. And what of the person she used to be? Was it naivety or values that made her who she was? And weren't the two the same thing?.. In the end, it still didn't matter. "That woman is long dead now. I'm not her anymore, I chose not to. How could I ever begin to change who I am? Why would I?! I'm better off this way. I'm free. No one needs me, and I certainly don't need anyone, I made sure of that."
Author's Note: Knocking on doors and shouting has become a pattern, hasn't it?..