Just sitting here waiting for the banana bread I baked to cool...
Burdens
Fighting a high dragon was not a thing I would ever recommend doing unprepared. It made me curse the fact that I had let myself become distracted from crafting individual runes for my companions, in spite of Dagna's presence at Skyhold. Thanks to my abilities, no one suffered more than minor wounds...except Bull and Varric, whom I could not, of course, see.
Varric got caught by a dragonling sneaking up on him. It closed its teeth around his leg, tearing through one of his arteries, and had he not been standing right next to Solas, he would have bled out on the spot.
Bull underestimated just how nimble a dragon could be, and received a swipe from one of her enormous claws down his back for his lack of caution, and he was lucky that it didn't break his spine. Dorian was the one who called my attention to him. Not purposely - rather by not only rushing in to drag him out of the path of further harm, but by also managing to channel enough healing energy to keep all his organs functioning. It was the healing that demanded my notice. Dorian was near-hopeless when it came to the element of spirit - to see him desperate enough not only to try, but to actually succeed, told me something was very wrong.
I moved Solas to him, fearing my own limited abilities might not be enough.
Solas told me later that Bull managed to remain mostly conscious as they pulled him farther from the battle and stabilized him, and complained the entire time that he couldn't properly see what was happening. He was also inordinately proud of the scars - I heard him bragging about them on a number of occasions, which was almost enough to make me stop feeling guilty that he had received them at all.
Almost.
We did manage to defeat the dragon in the end, and her presence made it clear what had silenced the mine. Those of us who weren't wounded - and who weren't Solas, caring for the wounded - spent several days removing scales and carving out bones while Varric and Bull healed. We sent Cole to the forward camp, and Inquisition scouts came and took our hard-won prizes away to ship back to Skyhold.
Meanwhile, Dorian changed tents, trading places with Blackwall so that he could sleep with Bull and Varric, though we all knew Varric had nothing to do with it.
"Shoulda placed a bet, Vanish," the dwarf told me in an undertone when I brought them dinner.
"I don't think my money would have been on 'goaded into admitting to affection by a dragon,'" I retorted.
"Really?" he responded. "We need to teach you to read people better."
I didn't point out that I couldn't see people well enough to read them most of the time.
Once Varric and Bull were well enough to move, we packed up our camp and took them down to the Crossroads, where Solas insisted they stay with actual healers from the Inquisition while we went on to find out more about the bandits operating in the area. Like the ones we had killed on our way to meet Alexius, they were behaving strangely - and, as Varric pointed out, the Carta was unlikely to be moving lyrium of any sort alone.
"We'll come back for you before we enter the Carta's outpost," I promised them.
"Deep Roads? Sure, can't wait," Varric muttered in reply.
It took us two days to clear out the bandits, though it probably would have been one were I capable of walking faster. They had taken over a substantial portion of the Hinterlands surrounding an old keep, and it was a lot of ground to cover. In addition to bandits, there were also assorted rifts to deal with and a cave bear that had been disturbed from her hibernation by one the rifts. She was eager to take out her bad mood on us, and we were forced to kill her.
Even with all the activity - even though it was still snowing - I was too restless to remain at the fire that night. I wasn't enough of a fool to go anywhere alone, but Solas didn't seem to mind joining me for a late evening stroll. We had hardly found a moment alone for weeks, and though sharing a bedroll helped, I missed private, or at least semi-private, conversations, as well as kissing him. I thought often about proposing we meet in the Fade, but I hadn't wanted to miss out on the possibility of dreaming the strange dream I had been having, and I especially didn't want him to see it. Not yet. Nor had he proposed we dream together, so I thought it likely he had reasons of his own for maintaining separate dream-spaces.
I was still thinking of all this when he broke the silence: "You feel responsible for the injuries Varric and the Iron Bull sustained."
The phrasing made me snort. "I am responsible for the injuries they sustained. Remember how I mentioned personalized runes? I didn't make it a priority as I should have. I thought being able to see the rest of the group and most of our enemies would be enough."
Solas stopped walking and turned to face me, taking my gloved hands in his. "You have had a great deal on your mind, ma vhenan. You told me of your plan, and I too failed to follow up on it. The burden on that score is shared."
"I let myself become distracted by Satinalia, a shemlen holiday with no meaning for me," I pointed out, my voice little more than a snarl. "My distraction was - selfish enjoyment."
"Good," he retorted, eyes narrowed. His hands released mine to cup my face. "You merit far more happiness than you are likely to find on this path, emma lath. No one expects perfection, and a dragon is a dangerous foe at the best of times - which this was not, as we were not expecting the encounter. None of us died, and the two who were seriously injured will recover. This was a victory." He lowered his forehead to rest against mine. "I'm sorry that I failed either to remind you of the runes or to pursue the thought myself. No one should have to carry so many burdens alone."
"I'm not," I protested. "Josephine, Leliana, and Cullen still do most of the work organizing things - collecting information and often making the decisions, too. There really aren't that many they require my input on."
He pulled back far enough to regard me silently, waiting.
"But the ones that do require my input are usually of the potentially-world-ending variety," I admitted grudgingly after a moment of his eyes staring implacably into mine, "and I'm also managing our team and whatever crises we're facing on the ground. Sometimes I can't keep all the timelines and priorities straight, and ordering that sort of information is one of the few things I'm good at."
"It is one of the many things you are good at," Solas corrected me, bending to place a kiss on my lips. I couldn't help the soft sound of disbelief that escaped me, but he let it pass without comment. His lips were soft and a little cold - his nose pressing against my cheek was very cold - but his breath when he opened his mouth was warm, and his tongue as it slipped into my mouth was hot. His arms wrapped around me, pulling me as close as our many layers of clothing allowed, and he growled his displeasure at the obstruction, his teeth scraping my lower lip.
It wasn't lust, I realized - or at least not primarily lust, though that was certainly present. I remembered the first time I had kissed him and the seemingly-endless depths of his need for touch and - well, any sort of personal contact. He held himself too much apart, even now, and though he had been hiding it fairly successfully, I understood now that he had been suffering these last weeks. "I'll live, I promise you," he whispered against my lips, no doubt feeling my spark of recognition.
I scoffed and stripped off my gloves, stuffing them inelegantly into a pouch at my belt and reaching up to cup his face. He made a small sound of appreciation as my hands shaped the planes of his face, ghosted across his jaw and down his neck, and traced the edge of one of his ears.
At first his arms tightened around me further, and his kiss became more desperate, his tongue sweeping restlessly through my mouth. But as my hands continued to caress every bit of bared skin they could find - which wasn't much, in the cold - he slowly relaxed, desperation mellowing to gratitude and pleasure. This time I nipped at his lip. "You're about ready to start purring, I can tell."
"I am most certainly not," he replied with a breathless laugh. "Though I am many things, feline was never one of them."
I didn't agree, but was more interested in kissing him than arguing about it.
We stayed there until numbed extremities drove us back to camp.
In the morning we assaulted the keep - an almost insultingly simple matter considering that there were only about fifteen bandits spread throughout with no means of raising a general alarm, no dogs, and no mages. In the study their captain had kept, we found a ledger detailing shipments of red lyrium and a key to a place called Valammar - which I assumed was the name of the trading outpost.
We returned to the Crossroads and found Bull and Varric much improved even from only a day before - having more than a single dedicated healer made a difference. Even so, it seemed prudent to stay the night. I judged it too far to walk all the way back to Valammar, especially as I meant to leave Sylalhan and our horses at the Inquisition camp with Corporal Vale, since we were also leaving all our baggage. I spent the afternoon letting Vale show me around the village and camp, pointing out the improvements that had been made and introducing me to some of the more prominent locals. Solas accompanied me, often offering me a hand or arm to help me over rough ground, which made our relationship rather clear but did maintain the illusion that I could see. Vivienne and Cassandra were both uneasy about the former - though I only knew Cassandra agreed with Vivienne because the enchanter demanded to hear her opinion - but allowed that the latter was a worthy goal.
"Would you have preferred I take Dorian?" I asked them. "Josephine seemed to think he would be at least as problematic as Solas if I were connected to him romantically. Or perhaps Blackwall? Sera? Does one of you wish to pretend to be my lover?"
"No," Cassandra sighed, "I would not want to pose as your lover."
"Out of those available, the Warden might have been the best choice," Vivienne told me, "but that admittedly isn't saying much. I do take your point, my dear."
"I am already sealing rifts, disrupting a trade in red lyrium, attempting to corral desperate Wardens, and hunting down an ancient darkspawn magister," I told them, my temper slipping free a little, even though I knew I shouldn't let it. "I am not going to arrange what little personal life I have to suit Orlesian aristocratic tastes - nor waste more time and energy than I have to spare maintaining a pretense that I am doing so. If they try to force me...well, I suppose if they strip me of all power, then they can take on the task of saving the world."
"They would fail," Cassandra murmured. "The current state of the world makes it clear that they would fail." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Inana - I understand your complaints. I had similar ones when I left Nevarra to join the Seekers. My fear for the safety of Thedas and the stability of the Chantry should not blind me to - if you were to break under the strain of everything on your shoulders, it would likely doom us all. Find your strength wherever you can. I will say no more about it."
"You are needed for now, that is true," Vivienne allowed. "But what about after, when you have defeated Corypheus and done the bulk of what you set out to do?"
My breath caught as I realized that, in my anger, I had nearly revealed what I had told Sera I should not: my lack of interest in power for its own sake. "There will come a time when the Inquisition requires a leader with skills I do not possess," I said carefully. "When I step down from my position - provided I am not killed in battle first - I hope for only two things: to leave the Inquisition in a state that allows it to confront whatever the next threat is, and to leave my people more secure than they were before I ascended to become Inquisitor."
"Admirable goals, indeed," Vivienne said approvingly, and I hoped the approval was genuine. If it was, then I had succeeded in salvaging the moment by offering vulnerabilities she believed she could exploit. With luck, I had even done it well enough that she didn't know it was what I intended, though I wasn't counting on it.
Creators, she and her anbanal'maval Game gave me such a headache.
Vale invited my party to join him and his Irregulars at their fire that evening, which we did, enjoying their cheerful camaraderie. I had considered not sharing a tent with Solas that night since we were in a large camp, but after my conversation with Vivienne and Cassandra, I no longer had it within me to care. We remained reasonably circumspect in public, and then I took him to bed where I could hold him tight and slip my hand under his untucked shirt to trace patterns across his ribs and back.
In the morning Varric and Bull were judged well enough to fight, and so we set out for Valammar.
Anbanal'maval: Void-sucking