Ughhh, one of my sticks of RAM is failing. Really hate troubleshooting this stuff, mostly because my computer is in an awkward location for cracking the chassis open, which means moving everything to the floor so all the cables will reach and everything, then putting it all back when I'm done, then I have to do it all again when I replace the stick. It's just so much hassle.

Dorian Stays

I woke late, so tired from the night before that even a lifetime of waking at dawn hadn't been able to drag me from sleep. Thankfully, all I had before me was a leisurely ride back to Haven, surrounded by Blackwall, Dorian, Varric, Leliana, and, of course, Solas. It would take days to bring all the mages to the already-overflowing town, and then likely a few more to get them sufficiently settled for any of us to feel comfortable assaulting the Breach.

There was, for the first time in many, many weeks, nowhere for me to rush off to. I would have time to train, to have conversations, to drink a little - maybe I would even finally learn something about playing cards.

Maybe I would visit Solas.

He greeted me with sufficient - but not undue - warmth when I sat down at the fire to eat my breakfast, but he and Varric were evidently deeply involved in some discussion of the finer points of writing technique. I was still too tired to even pretend to follow - I only wondered how he wasn't tired. Perhaps he had napped while waiting for me the night before.

Dorian stumbled out of his own tent when I was halfway done with my meal. He sat next to me and took the bowl Varric handed him, kept warm by the fire as mine had been. "What?" he asked when he saw me watching him.

"It's...somehow you both look as though you just rolled out of bed, and as though you spent an hour styling your hair and pressing your clothes. How? How is that possible?" I demanded.

He smirked at me. "One of my many talents." Then he leaned closer and lowered his voice. "I confess myself surprised, though, that you're wasting any of your time looking at me, when someone who appears to interest you far more is sitting right across the fire from you."

Ah. He remembered, of course - that moment in the future when I asked for privacy with Solas. When, if he had been watching, I had reached out, and Solas had held my arm, stroking it as though even so much contact were precious.

I smiled at Dorian, waiting for him to remember I couldn't see.

"You can't even see across the fire?" he asked after a moment, appalled.

"Not with the Veil in place," I sighed.

"How unfortunate," he said, burying his face in his breakfast bowl for a moment. Then he leaned in conspiratorially once more: "Do you want me to describe him for you?"

I might have taken him up on it, had Leliana not arrived then to carry us off to answer her questions about the report we had submitted.

Varric looked up from his conversation as she was taking us away. "Tell me, Nightingale - do I remember correctly? Don't you know King Alistair of Ferelden?"

"I do," Leliana said lightly, "though it has been many years and we are very different people now. I met with him before he left this morning, and we exchanged a few words of greeting."

"Some of which will benefit the Inquisition?" the dwarf asked shrewdly.

"Perhaps," she replied. "In time. We are only one small piece of all he has to consider, just as he is only a small piece of all we must consider. It was good to speak with him, at least."

Leliana spent at least an hour - and perhaps nearer two - interrogating us, trying to find more context, more details we might have overlooked. I was wrung out by the end of it, and I had already been exhausted. Dorian didn't look any better, and draped an arm comfortingly across my shoulders, guiding me as we returned to our tents to begin packing up - or possibly he was leaning some of his weight on me. My own limbs felt so heavy I couldn't even tell for certain. "Well, my dear time-traveling companion, try to remember to roll up your bed and not fall into it," he told me as we parted at his tent.

"Don't give me ideas," I groaned, leaving him behind.

I did spend an inordinate amount of time staring blankly into space while I tried to remember what I had just been intending to do, but at last I was packed, and Blackwall was kind enough to distribute my gear between my mount and the packhorse we had requisitioned. I presumed from Dorian's pointed comments and, when I was close enough to see him, his over-the-top pouting, that he hadn't received similar assistance. "I'm halfway to blind," I reminded him when he directed one of the comments at me. "It would have taken me ages on a good day."

"Well, now you're just talking sense, and everyone knows that isn't playing fair," he sniffed.

"Anyway," Blackwall muttered from where he rode a little ahead of us, "I didn't do it because of that."

They began bickering again. I shook my head and stared straight ahead, trying to keep my eyes open - imagined Solas riding up beside me and offering to ride with me so that I could sleep. I would fall asleep with my head leaning back against his shoulder and his arms around me…

I had to snap myself awake. And it wasn't Solas who noticed and rode up beside me - I thought he might have been conversing with Leliana somewhere ahead of the rest of us, both of them trying not to listen to Blackwall and Dorian, no doubt. "You need someone to ride with there, Vanish?" Varric asked. "Broke her neck falling out of the saddle would be a damned embarrassing way to die at this point."

"Are you offering?" I asked, somewhat amused by the thought. Varric wasn't much of a rider on the best of days, and he was more than a handspan shorter than I was, even if he was broader.

"Chuckles might do it if you gave him a pretext - talking Fade shit or something - but I'll bet Hero would do it out of a sense of duty, though he might accidentally notice he finds you attractive and then spend the rest of the week feeling guilty about it," Varric replied.

I felt my eyes go wide. "Well...I suppose I should spare him that. I'll try to stay awake."

"You're way too nice of a kid for your own good," he sighed. "That rarely ends well."

We arrived at Haven in the evening, where I was forced into a meal before being allowed to slink off to my house - still, miraculously, mine alone - to sleep. Solas was kind enough to help me back, though I made no use of it at all. I may, in fact, have fallen asleep on my feet halfway there.

There was a request for my presence at the chantry the next morning, where I had to defend my decision to offer the mages an alliance first to Cassandra and Cullen, and then to Vivienne when she heard what we were talking about and decided to join the fight. I had Leliana on my side, and she was certainly a formidable ally, but it was an uncomfortable morning.

Still, no one suggested we should renege, and that was something.

I escaped as soon as I could, wandering through Haven. It wasn't as confining as it had felt prior to my jaunt into the future, and so I didn't immediately head for the gates. Instead, I turned instinctively towards where Solas resided - but Dorian intercepted me before I made it there. "I would like to go with you when you close the Breach," he said without preamble, taking my hand and threading my arm through his. "I'm curious to see it up close."

"Oh, so you're staying, then?" I glanced up at him, unable to keep the hopeful lilt from my tone. In an all-too-real way, we had traveled to the end of the world together. I trusted him to fight to stop it in a way I didn't quite trust anyone else.

"Yes, I just love the south to little pieces," he replied with his customary levity. "So charming and rustic. And I know how devastated you would be without me."

Snow crunched under our feet, and I thought I saw people stepping out of our way with more alacrity than they did for me alone, but I couldn't be certain. "Devastated is pushing it," I replied. "Perhaps mildly sulky."

He threw his head back and laughed. "It's strange how much we have seen together without my knowing much about you at all. You're Dalish, yes? That's the word here?"

"That's the word everywhere, as far as I know," I replied.

"We...don't have Dalish clans coming northward...for obvious reasons," he said slowly. "So I've never met one of your people before, though I have heard about them. A little."

"Anything shocking?" I asked.

"Oh, well, you know: amazing how those elves can live without being slaves," he said, and I detected a hint of nervousness in his tone.

"I'm not going to lay the blame for the entire history of Tevinter and elves on you," I assured him. "I appreciate you coming here to help."

"Mutual appreciation is a good start," he allowed.

"What about you?" I asked.

"What about me?" he replied. "You know all the most salient points, I think: mage from Tevinter, charming, handsome, and well-dressed - "

"Those are entirely true, and also not nearly as salient as you seem to believe," I retorted. "Your charm is actually what made me wary of trusting you. Luckily for you - and all of us - Felix is much less charming and much more compelling."

"Ah, I'm wounded," he told me, pressing his hand to his heart.

"Only your vanity," I chuckled. "Stop avoiding the question. Is House Pavus very important?"

"Oh yes," he said, much too lightly for me to take him seriously. "Or, well, my ancestors liked to think so. I am the result of a centuries-long breeding program, all the magical talent and charm of the generations concentrated in my person, indulged and petted by a legion of family retainers, and occasionally by my parents - when they could be bothered. I hated it, of course."

"And ran off to the south as soon as you could?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Well, something to that effect," he allowed. "I might have been less eager had I known precisely how much mud there was."

"Where are we going?" I asked suddenly, squinting as I tried to look around. Was that the wall on our left? I had been letting Dorian lead me without attempting to keep track of where we were.

"The lake outside looked rather sublime - I thought I might take it in. We don't have hard freezes in the north, you know," he told me.

I had no objection, and let him take me along.

"All the snow is rather lovely," he told me as we walked, "although I don't know why it has to be so cold."

"You...don't know why snow is cold?" I repeated skeptically.

"Well, of course I know why," he scoffed. "I just don't know why the world is so set on existing in ways that aren't convenient for me personally." I caught his smirk as he glanced down at me.

"As long as you're demanding things of reality, maybe you could close the hole in the sky and make it so this Elder One just...never existed?" I requested.

"I don't know, I have a very full schedule making demands on my own behalf," he told me, "but I'll try to work it in - only because I like you."

I laughed at him as he pushed the gates open, which seemed to please him.

We made our way down to the lake - slowly, which was about the only way I made my way anywhere - chatting as he asked me about the Inquisition's leaders. The other people I had recruited - Blackwall, Bull, Sera, and Vivienne - took us around to the far side of the lake. He was trying to determine who the best drinking partners were likely to be (other than Varric - that was a given), when I felt a familiar breath of magic.

Dorian looked up at the same time. "Solas is practicing," he commented, giving me a sly glance.

My cheeks heated. "I should likely be doing the same," I sighed, caught between embarrassment over the fact that Dorian was clearly going to tease me relentlessly about this, and guilt that I had been - well, doing literally anything other than practicing the magic I was trying to master. It was still so uncertain, and it was virtually worthless if I couldn't count on it.

"Oh come now," Dorian prodded, "I think you've earned a little relaxation."

I gestured to the sky. "No, I'm afraid I haven't."

His shoulder nudged mine. "Stop being so dedicated. You'll make those of us who prefer to laze about look bad." Then a knowing smirk crossed his face. "Unless this isn't about study and practice so much as whom you're studying and practicing with ?"

"I - I wasn't going to join Solas," I protested. "I usually practice on the lake."

"No, no," Dorian told me blithely. "I have no objection to helping lovers meet in the woods, but actual work? I absolutely forbid it. I'm afraid you're coming with me, my dear."

And with that, he steered me away from the lake, toward the sparse forest and the scent of Solas's magic. I might have protested further - I should have protested further - but I didn't.