Responsibility:
The very good people did not convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands - and you hated the things it asked of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known before - and it's better than anything I've known.
Okay, she thought, annoyed. I suppose the wall has handholds - that is, if you considered a narrow fissure in the side of a stone brick, or the shallow crevice between each block a 'handhold'. Varric wasn't entirely full of crap.
"Maker's balls," the woman muttered as she heaved herself upward with one leg, her foot pushing against the lip of one of stone blocks that made up the massive grey wall she scaled. "Maker's flamingballs."
What the sassy dwarf's note had neglected to mention was that the stone exterior of Skyhold, the inexplicably monstrous keep that somehow managed to lurk, unknown, in the mountains for decades, was coated in slime. Decades of obscurity meant decades of built up bird shit. Moss. A million other things that the dark haired woman clinging to the side of keep did not want to contemplate for too long.
"This," she groaned as she her shoulders engaged and she hefted herself up another foot, fingers scrambling for purchase on the next block up. "is not what I signed up for."
"Scale the wall, no big deal." The muttering continued and she reminded herself not to look down. The climb up the mountain was fine, but she'd expected a covert welcome from some secret passage, Varric with a sly grin and ready wisecrack. Instead, she'd found a note hastily scrawled in their agreed-upon spot.
Sorry brighteyes. Varric's cursive was as dramatic as his storyteller's voice, wide loops and needless pomp. When she was in a bad mood, the careless scribbles made her want to punch something.
She wanted to punch him right now.
Curly's establishing a guard rotation. He's going nuts, all guilty eyes and overcompensation. All the ground entrances are under watch but they don't have anything firm in place for the walls yet. I'll see you at the top, by the rookery. There are handholds. Shouldn't be a problem for you what with you being all bendy and whatnot.
The rookery. Hence the bird shit. Lovely.
She swore one last time before her fingers found the blessed crenellations of the top of the wall. With a last inelegant grunt, she swung herself up and over the edge, feet finding welcome and firm purchase on the stone walkway of the battlement.
"See? I told you. Easy as making Daisy blush."
She was panting hands on her knees. Panting and filthy, covered in sweat and Andraste knows what. But she wasn't going to let him see that. She straightened, hands on her hips.
"I own half of the Maker forsaken city that you call home." The dwarf's eyebrows raised, but she didn't care if she looked like nug dung caked to a caravan wheel. She was going to wipe that smug look right off Varric's face. "I'm so rich I could buy the boots right off your stinking feet."
The dwarf's grin broadened. He was, she noticed unimpressed, even cleaner than usual, nauseating orange hair pushed back in an orderly sweep, his gaudy chain necklace shining like he'd spent all morning polishing it.
"And," she took a step forward. "I'm so fast I could have you over this stupidly high wall before Bianca would even hear you scream."
Blue eyes met hazel ones and she tried to keep her face serious.
"I've missed you Hawke."
Her face broke into the crooked grin she knew she was famous for, and then their laughter was echoing up to the clouds.
Below, she noticed over Varric's shoulder as she pulled the dwarf into a messy hug, the residents of Skyhold swarmed. Ants with purpose, clearing debris, laying out ordered bedrolls for the injured, already assembled in tidy lines and practicing sword forms.
A people desperate for purpose in the wake of a terror they didn't want to remember.
He's back. Varric's letter had said, the dwarf's looping script spelling out an impossibility that felt like a punch to the gut. Warden-Commander Larius had disappeared. The other wardens had been odd of late, vacant or simply vanished. Hawke knew that, had seen the signs and a distant part of her had wondered. But even still she couldn't believe because she'd seen that demon magister die, felt his body cave and life retreat beneath her daggers.
It's him Hawke. He told the Inquisitor that he'd seen the throne of the Maker and that it was empty. A frantic energy in Varric's penwork, a nervousness she'd rarely known from him. That scared her as much as his next words had. Sweet Andraste it's fucking him. What do we do?
She'd written back immediately.
I'm coming.
Her father's blood magic was what had held Corypheus at bay all those years. And it was her actions that in part set the magister free. Was anywhere safe from him?
She turned and contemplated the climb she'd just performed. Skyhold was a miracle beyond comprehension, it's sprawling walls seeming seamlessly into the mountain side.
"This place…" she didn't have words for it.
The isolation that Skyhold exuded had been foreign to her until very recently. Before the fall of Kirkwall, her life was city streets and the too-close press of strangers, an illogical juxtaposition of lightning reflexes with knives in the dark or stupid dresses and the brash declarations of mid-day duels. Aristocratic ladies and ambitious crime lords. Downtrodden elves and proud dwarven merchants. Impassioned mages and righteously indignant Templars. The thought of that last pair caused Hawke's fingers to ball in angry fists at her side.
Who she was angry at? The slumped shoulders of a feathered robe – a friend who made all the wrong choices at the very worst of times. The angry, intense eyes and uncompromising jawline of a lover who disapproved of her beliefs and her decisions, his rage so palpable that it brought his skin alight. Herself, for letting it come to pass. Hawke frowned, tried to will the thoughts away as she'd tried so many times before.
"Impressive, right?"
Beyond the battlements, the Frostbacks stood proud, their hard surfaces mottled with green below the peaks. Altogether different from the jagged cold and uncompromising frost of the Vimmark Mountains where she, Varric and Fenris had followed Janeka.
"How did they find it?" She spun slowly, eyes missing nothing as they swept beyond the curling wall of the rookery, admiring the broad stone pathways and busy energy of the refugees below. She stepped forward, brought her hands to the opposite ledge and looked out over Skyhold.
Varric was talking at her side, spinning simple facts into myths and miracles. Their Herald lived – she'd saved them all and buried their former base of operations in an avalanche she shouldn't have survived. They'd made her the Inquisitor and she'd unflinchingly lifted a sword and given them all hope.
It should've been Hawke.
Her fingers tightened on the battlement wall as she watched the men and women scurrying and desperate below.
She'd known what Corypheus was. She'd seen what red lyrium could do. She'd fought and led and bled on this sort of scale before. Who was the Inquisitor to the Champion of Kirkwall?
Your damned ego. Fenris' voice in her head and she remembered all the reasons she had for fleeing. With Varric's help, the Inquisition never found her. You're not the only one who can save the world, Hawke.
For all his brusqueness, Fenris knew what she wanted to hear. It was so easy to walk away from it all, to go into hiding never thinking that Varric would become so impossibly tied up in the Inquisition's web.
But the gaping wounds, the hollow eyes of the survivors of Haven, and the blood that soaked into the ground of the courtyard below – Hawke had seen this sight before. A city turning in on itself, neighbour against neighbour. A woman with an accursed blade and madness in her eyes.
A friend, sitting on a crate, his shoulder's heavy with the weight of what he'd done.
She couldn't save Kirkwall from itself. And now the darkspawn she'd released had all of Thedas as his prey.
What place did she have here?
"Hawke?"
"Sorry, Varric." She looked down at her friend and smiled, her anger about scaling the wall gone. There was no time for self-deprecation. "Just marvelling at the grandeur that could've been mine."
Varric snorted.
"Assuming they wouldn't run you through on the spot."
She laughed then, a light sound against the crispness of the cool mountain air. Choices in the heat of the moment when everyone was demanding justice for what Anders had done. A justice she couldn't deliver, no matter how many steadfast allies demanded it. The prince of Starkhaven with disappointment in blue eyes so like her own, the countless silly moments they'd shared now forgotten.
The former entourage of Divine Justinia had every reason to want her dead.
"A fair point. But really, when isn't someone trying to run me through?"
Varric chucked and clapped a hand on her shoulder.
"It's complete bullshit." He confided, hazel eyes on hers again. "But somehow knowing you're here makes me feel like everything's gonna work out."
She arched an eyebrow at him.
"No pressure though, brighteyes."
"Go fetch this new woman of yours, dwarf." She kicked him lightly in the shin. "I want to see what you've scrounged up to replace me."
He laughed again, waving over her shoulder as he ambled away.
"As her grace demands."
"I thought we'd agreed on 'her majesty'!" she shouted after his retreating back.
Her smiled faded as Varric disappeared down a staircase. She leaned forward on her elbows, gazing out over the courtyard below. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if she ought to be more cautious. Varric went to great lengths to keep her presence in Skyhold a secret. But with their new poster child Inquisitor, maybe the caution was overdone. Maybe they could finally let Hawke be Hawke.
She looked down at her hands, callused fingers responsible for more lives than she'd ever imagined as a young girl in Lothering. She was tired. But the red lyrium and the haunting voice of a darkspawn that spoke – this was a fight she had started.
"Why does it always have to be you, Hawke?" Fenris paced the length of their encampment, a little nowhere in the Free Marches.
"My father was the one who kept him imprisoned." She stood in front of the elf, arms crossed, stillness and determination against his unchecked frustration. "We let him out again."
Hawke didn't believe in destiny or fate. Most days, the Maker was a convenient excuse for her actions, a distant entity she had given up on long ago. But her family's history was woven in with the Conductor, a series of encounters that had put the Magister on his present path. Responsibility was there and Hawke did not shirk at responsibility.
"I have to do this, Fenris."
"No," he snarled, launching himself at her, fingers surprisingly gentle as he grasped her shoulders. That was always Fenris – a study in opposites, ferocity and softness all at once when it came to Hawke. "Why does it always have to be you?"
She looked up into his eyes, green against the moonlight of his hair. Kissed him gently but he pulled away. Anguish in between his eyebrows and she felt a tightness in her chest. Swallowed and put a hand up to his cheek.
"I'm sorry."
The sound of footsteps behind her brought Hawke out of the memory. She turned, rested her elbows back on the battlements and watched Varric approach with the stranger.
"Her Inquistorialness," Varric swept an arm towards Hawke and bowed. "May I present the Champion of Kirkwall."
The Inquisitor was small. Dark brown hair and tanned skin, intense eyes but delicate features that were set in a mask that even Hawke couldn't read. Hawke didn't both to hide her appraising gaze – it wasn't often that she came face to face with a woman like herself – a woman who supposedly came from nothing and now commanded everything.
Hawke turned her piercing eyes on her friend and let her face break into a crooked smile.
"Champion of a pile of rubble and smoke, you mean?"
It was true. Kirkwall was burning in riots when she'd left. Meredith was quelled but the threat the woman presented had spread like wildfire as the mages of Thedas rose up and the Templars cracked violently down.
The Inquistor laughed and it transformed her face, the intensity of her eyes giving way to sparkling mirth. She was all sharp planes, dark leather armour and knives at her wrists, her ankles and over her back. Hawke's smile deepened at the knives – she didn't meet many in positions of power who so openly clung to a thief's fighting style.
"At least you can still see Kirkwall." The Inquistor's voice was lower than Hawke had expected. The elf put a hand on her hip and regarded Hawke. "The last city I was in charge of is buried beneath ten leagues of snow."
Hawke crossed her arms and let her weight settle into one hip.
"And from what this mongrel tells me," she nodded towards Varric. "You wanted it that way?"
"Well," Ellana Lavellan strode forward. "You did let an ancient nutbar magister out of his eternal magic prison. So really, I've got you to blame."
Hawke raised an eyebrow. Champion of Kirkwall – she was a living legend but this girl showed none of the sniveling deference or awestruck rapture that Hawke met in many strangers. The Inquisitor was quite a bit shorter than Hawke, but she didn't seem the slightest bit intimidated.
"Ladies, ladies," Varric raised two mollifying hands and tried to step between them. He couldn't read the situation and Hawke knew he wasn't a fan of situations he couldn't control.
Hawke stepped even closer to the elf, looked down her nose and met those green eyes.
"If we're going to be playing that game, I've heard rumours that we have you to thank for that." She nodded her head towards the subdued vortex of the Breach, luminescent even in the harsh light of day. "And for all the lovely demons that come prancing out of it."
Lavellan's eyes scanned her face but Hawke couldn't read her expression. She felt Varric's tension at her side. The elf's face was so different from Merrill's for all they said that the Inquisitor had walked with the Dalish. She had none of Merrill's obvious tells and easy blushes, none of the twisting ink and patterns of ancient gods.
Finally, the elf smiled and extended her hand.
"Well then, Champion of Kirkwall, I guess we're both a little responsible for fucking up the world."
Hawke barked a laugh too, a genuine ripple through her torso that surprised even her. She clasped the elf's wrist firmly.
Finally, she thought, someone who can really understand.
They'd leaned against the battlements and talked of many things – of the Wardens and Stroud, of exactly what they'd done when she'd thought she'd killed Corypheus. Varric wandered off when they stopped showing signs of maybe killing each other, and the conversation came with unexpected ease. The Inquisitor was fast; she pushed off the wall and paced, she asked rapid-fire questions, and processed Hawke's responses in the blink of an eye.
Only the mention of Corypheus brought a cloud over the Inquisitor's face. It was a fresh wound, both on her body in the side she favoured slightly and in the defeated postures and tired gestures of the men and women scattered throughout the keep below them.
"I've never felt anything like it," the elf said softly. Her fingers played at a bruise around her wrist, and Hawke knew the former magister had left that mark.
Hawke understood the feeling. In the Deep Roads, when Bertrand had all but left them for dead, she'd thought that she and her friends had fought every type of Darkspawn there was. When they found Corypheus, alone in the mountains, and heard the poison words that dropped from his lips, she'd felt as though the world around her changed. The rules evolving. Darkspawn that could speak and lead like men. An evil that corrupted the very order that existed to fight it.
"Stroud will help." She reassured the elf, wishing she was as confident as she sounded. She let one gloved hand rest on Lavellan's shoulder. The elf looked at her and Hawke realized just how young she was. "We will do this together."
The Inquisitor smiled softly.
"Come on. Let's go get a drink."
The open invitation in the Inquisitor's face. The knowledge that somehow this little elf with her intense eyes and her razor sharp smile understood, knew all the same pressures of unasked-for responsibility.
Hawke wanted so badly to say yes. But Fenris was waiting at the foot of the mountain and Varric had put his neck out for her secrecy.
She looked back at the mountains beyond, and then down at her grime smeared armour.
"Maybe another time."
The Inquisitor's face fell and Hawke was surprised to find herself a little disappointed too. She barely knew the woman. Why should either of them care? They'd both probably be dead before the year was out – how did you fight an unkillable demon that you'd already killed?
No point in getting attached, she rationalized.
"It was good to meet the legend, Inquisitor." She said, heading back to the wall she'd climbed just hours before. "You're smaller than the stories make you sound. Travel sized, really."
The elf laughed. "And you're exactly as obnoxious as the legends make you sound."
Hawke flashed the younger woman a crooked grin.
"We'll chat more once you've found Stroud." She nodded at the elf's hand. "You owe me a demo of that green glowy thing you do."
Inexplicable magic that sundered gates to the fade. Fenris was going to love that.
The Inquisitor let the hand with the mark settle on her hip, flashing her own cheeky grin back at Hawke.
"I'll save you a front row seat. If you can keep up, that is."
"I was fighting demons before you were born, elf." She tossed one leg over the wall. "A little stick like you is just going to slow me down."
"Spoken like an old hag who's passed her prime."
Hawke laughed as her fingers found handholds and she began her descent.
"Just means the demons will go for you first. Meat's more tender."
"I'm walking away now." Ellana shouted after her, not bothering to look over the edge of the wall.
"Run out of clever things to say, Inquisitor?" Hawke called back up. Going down was easier than climbing up, she was happy to realize.
"Aren't you supposed to be sneaking away? You know, silently?"
Hawke just laughed and shook her head. The girl was fun. Foolish, over-eager. Painfully wanting to do the right thing.
Her smile faded. That had been Hawke once. Change the world and do what was best, all that nonsense.
But what did you do when the Arishok demanded the life of a friend who was undeniably in the wrong? When Merrill played with magics awesome beyond her comprehension, and asked for Hawke's help with young and curious eyes? When Anders' rage took physical form in the destruction of a building and the death of a good woman?
Her feet kept moving, automatic, as the memories overtook her.
What did you do when a city demanded to be saved at the same time that it destroyed itself? When there was no right side, just a side that was maybe a little less wrong than the other?
When someone else came asking for her help anyway, even after everything she'd done. She'd left Kirkwall in flames and saved herself. But there were always more bodies, people with sad stories and broken lives, in need of fixing and leadership and answers.
She'd told herself that she was done. No more. Her help just left people dead anyway.
But the Inquisitor's face was full of hope. Naive optimism that somehow they could win.
Hawke's feet found the ground and she craned her neck, looking up at the sprawling fortress above her. In the shadows at the foot of the keep, she was in her element, and the guards on a distant bridge would never see her.
She clenched her hands at her sides, her face set in a steel line. One last time then. One last chance for something to end well, without flames and death and blame.
She didn't think that they could win. But the Inquisitor and her easy laugh – there was still a chance that she could turn out different. Not like Hawke or the so-called Hero of Ferelden, another legend that fled a world that needed her one too many times.
The Inquisitor could keep her smile, maybe. Hawke turned and jumped, feet finding purchase on the stones of the mountain side.
One last try then.
"You knew where Hawke was all along!" The Seeker threw Varric to the chair, the rage that simmered in her veins threatening to boil over. Just when she was beginning to trust him. How could she have ever thought to trust him?
"You're damned right I did." The dwarf was unrepentant, slithered out from her grasp like the slimy eel that he was.
"You conniving little shit." Cassandra threw a punch at his head. Your temper, Cassandra. The Divine's voice played in her head but it wasn't enough to stop her from letting out a grunt of frustration as the dwarf put a long table between them. Your temper will always betray you. It is not a sword to be relied upon but rather an explosive, a ticking danger with a fuse you cannot see.
"You kidnapped me!" His hazel eyes were just as angry as her own, she realized. "You interrogated me! What did you expect?"
With a roar, she launched herself over the table at him, only to feel a sudden thwack to the side. Her back hit the table top and the Inquisitor was suddenly on top of her, pinning her wrists, legs around her waist.
"Enough!"
Cassandra can't remember if she's ever heard Ellana yell before. In combat, certainly, but in the safety of the top floor Skyhold's tavern, the sound is enough to give Cassandra pause. The Inquisitor's usually easy face is set in a determined expression of disapproval, her hair falling forward over his shoulders and her eyes holding Cassandra's with the steady intensity they always carried.
"How can you take his side?" She asks the elf, annoyed and shoving her wrist against the younger woman's hands. The Inquisitor does not budge. Varric takes a step back from them, his face melting into the shadows of the room.
Doesn't she see what the dwarf has cost them all? Time and lives and order sacrificed for his secret.
"I said," the elf leaned closer, her eyes holding Cassandra's and her voice menacing. She often forgot that the Inquisitor could be scary if she tried, effortlessly threatening to those who didn't see the world her way. "Enough."
Who was the elf to interfere? So much had been at stake and Varric had promised her over and over that he could not help.
Suddenly angry again, Cassandra writhed, throwing the Inquisitor off. Ellana took it in stride, rolled backward off the table and landing on her feet.
"We needed someone to lead this Inquisition," the Seeker paced in front of the others. "First, Lelianna and I searched for the Hero of Ferelden, but she had vanished."
In the firelight, the Inquisitor's face was hard to read. Flickering light on the sharp planes of her face. Varric's eyes defied her still, however – no shred of guilt, no sheepishness.
"Then, we searched for Hawke but she too was gone. We thought it all connected." She levelled her gaze on the dwarf.
"But no. It was just you, and your lies. You kept her from us."
"The Inquisition has a leader -" Varric turned to Ellana, arms wide, but the Seeker does not let him finish.
"Hawke would have been at the Conclave. If anyone could've saved the Most Holy –"
And there it is. What her frustration is really about. Justinia and her damned patience. Her willingness to do what was right no matter the cost. The unfairness of her being the one to die and Cassandra being the one to live and fail.
"No one could have prevented what happened at the Conclave." Ellana's voice is low as she steps between them.
"Varric is a liar," Cassandra grabbed the elf's shoulder. Couldn't she see why this mattered?
"I was protecting my friend." The dwarf's interjection is emphatic. "Wouldn't you do the same?"
She feels his question in her stomach, wonders what she would've done if a stranger had come for Leliana. For Ellana.
"He's a snake. Words of poison." She steps away from them both because she cannot stand the look on Ellana's face, the adamant refusal of Varric to accept responsibility.
"Even after the Conclave, when we needed Hawke the most you kept her a secret." Cassandra hates herself for the way her voice is breaking. She steps up to a banister; they are on the top level of the tavern, and down below come the muted sounds of mirth and tankards on wood.
The people are tired; they want to lose themselves in drink, but after the destruction of their former home, the breakneck march through the snow and wild, they lack even the energy to do that with any real revelry.
"We're on the same side, Seeker. Hawke's helping us now."
Cassandra leans her elbows on the banister and looks down at clasped hands. Would any of it be different if they'd found the Champion earlier? She glances back. Ellana, she is annoyed to see, has a hand on Varric's shoulder. Maybe that's why the next words that slip out of the Seeker's lips are vitriol.
"We all know what side you're on Varric. And it will never be the Inquisition's."
A look of hurt flashed over the dwarf's expression and a small part of her knew she was being unfair.
"Cassandra…" Ellana stepped towards her, always understanding, always forgiving. Damned woman. How could she extend so much of herself, over and over, after all the times that she'd been burned?
"Just go Varric." The Seeker puts a hand to her forehead and turns from them, gazes down at the tired soldiers below. "I cannot think of what could have been."
She hears the dwarf shuffle off, but of course he has to have the final word.
"You know what I think?" The self-defensive anger is gone from his tone. His pitch is, for once, solemn. "I think that if Hawke were at the Conclave, she'd be dead too."
Cassandra puts a hand to her forehead. The torchlight is warm, flickering, on her face and she knows in her heart that Varric's words are the truth.
"You people have done enough to her."
She recognizes in his parting words the loyalty of a true friend. Of someone who sacrificed his own safety for that of another. In the dwarf, she recognizes, absurdly, the selflessness of another – of her brother, dark hair and sad eyes as he capitulated to evil men instead fighting back. Was it concern for her safety that had stayed Anthony's hand?
She sighs and tries to let the anger go but it is so hard.
Mind the temper and you could achieve greatness, Cassandra. Act with humility and recognize when you are in the wrong.
Justinia made it all sound so easy. Her fingers flex and unflex before her and she can feel the presence of the Herald – the Inquisitor now – lurking behind her.
Done enough to her. Varric's words, and thus not to be trusted. But weren't they exactly what Cassandra was thinking when Ellana fell unconscious after her first attempt at closing the Breach. What right did they have to ask strangers to sacrifice everything?
"I… believed him." She knows Ellana will not leave until she receives an explanation. "He spun his story and I swallowed it."
Ellana comes up to the balcony behind her, rests her elbows down on the wooden railing. She can feel the warmth from the other woman's slight frame.
"If I had just explained what was at stake, made him understand…"
The Inquisitor reached out, those stupid fingerless gloves on her hand, and rests her fingers on Cassandra's wrist.
"This isn't about Hawke. Or Varric." The elf's voice is low.
How does she always know? Cassandra is a fool when it comes to people: Varric proved that. She trusts at the wrong time and is suspicious when suspicion is unwarranted.
Ellana, by contrast, senses when to speak and when to stay quiet. Knows how to strike the perfect balance between Cullen's staunch need for order and Leliana's pragmatic demands for nighttime assassinations and covert intel. Juggles the competing demands of a qunari who wants to chase down every dragon on the horizon and a power-seeking First Enchanter who takes each opportunity to bandy veiled threats and barbed compliments with pompous nobles.
"I know." Cassandra feels the weight of realization settle over her shoulders. "I should've been more careful. Smarter."
Ellana's fingers tighten at her wrist and the elf draws near, rests a head on the taller woman's shoulder.
"I don't deserve to be here. I'm a fool."
Ellana is silent for a long moment. Somehow, even the nearness of the elf helps still the swirling tempest of frustration inside the Seeker.
"Have you seen the Inquisition, Cassandra?" Ellana says suddenly. "Thedas' biggest bunch of misfits. We're all fools."
Despite herself, Cassandra chokes out a laugh. Maybe that was true. A prim and proper Antivan roughing it in the Ferelden wilds. A spymaster who couldn't be at peace with the lives she destroys. An ex-Templar who'd served the very evil that brought Kirkwall to its knees. And the Herald's companions too – a decidedly un-Tevinter-like mage, a rogue apostate, an anarchist elf and more. Who were the Inquisition but a bunch of cast away goods clinging to something that promised them purpose and value?
"That's supposed to make me feel better?"
She can hear the smile in the elf's voice when she replies.
"More at home, maybe." Then, after a pause. "It makes me feel better."
She rests her head on Ellana's. The Inquisitor's hair is warm, like it holds the heat of the sunlight. So different from the girl who'd lay still, frozen, and pale in Cullen's arms, pulled out of a snowbank and barely alive. The memory almost makes the Seeker gasp – it was so tangible, the fleeting potential that she hadletthe world lose its Herald. The elf, fire and evil dancing behind her and determination in green eyes, had told them to run from Corypheus and Cassandra had run for all she was worth, never thinking to make sure Ellana followed. Which, of course, the damned elf hadn't.
Cassandra is not an affectionate woman but there is something to be said for small moments of togetherness. She's never truly had a friend like this before. She is grateful, thanks the Maker a thousand times, for the miracle that is the Herald's survival.
"I want you to know," she says as she slowly realizes what her anger at Varric could imply for the small elf that leads them. "that I have no regrets."
"Hm?"
"Maybe if we'd found the Hero of Ferelden. Or Hawke. Maybe then the Maker would not have sent us you."
Ellana pulls away, turns her face to look at Cassandra. Her eyes are wide with a quiet wonder and Cassandra wonders exactly what she said.
"I'm glad that He did." Cassandra states.
Ellana laughs then, and the smile is bright on her face. Cassandra finds herself returning it.
"You're not what I pictured." She rests her hand on the Inquisitor's shoulder.
"More annoying, right?"
Cassandra snorts.
"Infinitely."
"And more charming."
"Don't get carried away."
"More beauteous?"
"Stop talking."
But she doesn't – Ellana natters on about a million inconsequential somethings. She wants new boots – the Inquisitor should have new boots, shouldn't she? The elfroot in the region is twice as tall and even more spindly than the Hinterlands variety – she's not sure what the new apothecary will do with it. Sera wants to bake cookies. Solas has taken up painting and added twelve obscure items to a requisition order to make his paints. Bull needs bigger quarters for all the Chargers because they insist on having three sets of gear each: "got to be ready for whatever shit your Maker throws our way," she explains in her best Bull-voice, low and silly and it has Cassandra chuckling.
Cullen's guard rotation has gaps the size of Antiva and Josephine is out of quills but Lelianna won't let her near the rookery. The new cook says none of the waif-like refugee girls Ellana has sent is any good underfoot and the old quartermaster is being snarky for reasons no one understands.
A thousand concerns and most of them belonging to other people.
Cassandra lets the sound of Ellana's voice fill her ears. It's refreshing, she thinks, that they finally have a moment for all these little wants and needs. The Inquisition needs the rest, the moment for reflection and the opportunity to begin making not just a refuge but a home. Of course, it would be Ellana, the Inquisitor herself cataloguing all these needs.
"The responsibility," she says, suddenly, her accented voice somehow so harsh against the ebbs and flows of Ellana's soothing tones.
She's interrupted the elf in the middle of a description of Dorian's library list.
"What responsibility?"
"All of it." Cassandra continues, wondering what she was trying to say. The words finding form only moments before they leave her lips. This was not like her – normally she is measured purpose and certainty, a prepared speech or surety of delivery. In the aftermath of her rage against Varric, she is off-kilter. "Why do you take it? Why do you listen to that greasy mageling go on about what the books that he wants?"
"Well, Dorian was a scholar long before he was a battle-mage." She's looking away, hands gesturing as she avoids the question. "I indulge the others, so it seems only fair that-"
"Not just Dorian. All of them. Any of them. Anyone else could listen. You are the Inquisitor now."
Ellana sighs as if she'd know what Cassandra meant all along.
"I know."
"Do you do it because you're the Inquisitor?" Cassandra could see the logic. The more important you were the more flattered people were when you stopped to listen. The more invested they became in the cause you represented. Josephine would approve, surely, a noble's tactic, as astute as it was old.
But the sudden look of vulnerability on the elf's face suggested that maybe there was more behind the Herald's selflessness. The elf's hands gripped the banister in front of her tightly, her green eyes looking at something far away.
"Ellana?" Somehow, Cassandra knew she'd earned the elf's trust. That not everyone got to see her like this, unmasked with her emotions forthright on her face. After their rough beginning, Cassandra couldn't fathom why the Inquisitor chose her.
Ellana blinked, looked down, her head listing to the side.
"It's just easier." She said finally, her voice heavy. "Josephine wants me to go to Halamshiral. To meet the bloody Empress of Orlais." She looked up at Cassandra. "Me? A thief and woods-wandering Dalish elf without an aristocratic bone in my body."
"You will not be alone…" Cassandra tries to intercede, but she's given the Inquisitor the permission to unburden and the elf won't stop now. She turns to face Cassandra, left hand on the banister as her right gestures broadly.
"The Champion of Kirkwall herself has summoned me to Crestwood, but the reports of out of there scare the shit out of me. An entire city – gone? Dying? Mist, giant rifts and Andraste knows what."
She starts to pace – Cassandra's seen the nervous energy in the Inquisitor before. It comes before a battle sometimes, before a late night rendezvous for some mission or when she's getting impatient in negotiation with some blathering noble.
"A group of our scouts went missing in the Fallow Mire, and Cullen says we've received a note demanding that I put myself forward as a champion and fight for their release. He doesn't want me to do it, but I can't just let them die."
"And the Wardens – Blackwall says that the reports are mixed, one claiming –"
Cassandra strides forward and puts a gauntleted hand on the Herald's arm.
"Hush."
Green eyes meet hazel and Cassandra offers the elf a smile. Ellana seems so young when her eyes are wide and worry creases her brow.
"He terrifies me, Cassandra." She confides, dropping the taller woman's gaze.
"Corypheus is a coward." The Seeker says firmly, loudly. In the silence that follows, the only sound is the crackling of the torches. "He let his demons and his nightmare army do his dirty work, and fled when you made victory impossible."
Ellana looks up again, the beginnings of hope creeping onto her face. Cassandra owes her this much; the Inquisitor needs support and confidence, now more than ever. The faded bruises on the elf's collarbone, her wrist, testify too loudly to the Magister's hold on her.
"You fought him back once." She clasps Ellana's wrists. "We'll do so again. Together. As many times as we need to."
Ellana swallows.
"We all get scared, Inquisitor." The elf needs the title now. Needs to remember who and what she is. What she has already accomplished.
"You never seem scared."
Cassandra barks a laugh.
"You watched me take my fear and frustration out on Varric." She steps back. "We will take it out on each other when we need to, and we will persevere through each of the ordeals before us."
"I'm just one elf, Cassandra." Ellana is looking at her, hands loose by her sides, like she wants to believe. "Two knives and quick reflexes."
"No." She steps forward, needs the other woman to understand. Reaches out and grabs her arm. "You are the Inquisitor and you lead the inquisition."
Ellana grins then, a half smile, as if she has suddenly decided that she needs to be optimistic.
"Thedas biggest band of misfits?"
Cassandra nods.
"Exactly." She turns and begins to head for the stairs. "Whatever we were before," she says to Ellana as the elf moves to follow her. "We are now the Inquisition."
That seems to please the elf. She gives a determined nod.
"Now come." Cassandra starts down the stairs. "I haven't tossed you in the mud in a while. You need to work on that stance."
Ellana laughs and follows her out into the sunlight.
Whatever we were before, the Seeker thinks as she draws her sword and settles easily into a dueling form.
She parries the elf's initial thrusts with ease, knows the Herald is starting slow. Their blades meet, a clang that rings out in the courtyard, drawing curious eyes. The elf's penchant for sparring is always amusing for the townsfolk and Blackwall saunters over, eyes ever-appraising.
Wherever we came from. Whatever names we called ourselves once.
She smiles and suddenly steps back. The Inquisitor careens forward at the loss of resistance and Cassandra's foot in the elf's back helps the smaller woman into the mud.
We are now the Inquisition.
The elf is up in an instant, a feral smile on her face. The match begins in earnest, and Cassandra is blessedly at peace.
Inquisitor,
The Avvar told me to write to you. They say they will kill us all if you do not come.
There are perhaps two dozen of them and they make their camp in the northeastern quadrant of the Fallow Mire. I can't tell if they keep to a guard rotation or what their defenses are. We were blindfolded when captured and since then I've only seen the inside of our prison walls.
There are eight of us. Matlock is wounded and it is beginning to fester. He will likely lose the leg.
The Avvar want me to beg you to come. They say that you must face their leader to save us. I am weak Inquisitor because I find myself doing so. I have told the others you will come. I say it over and over just to see the hope on their faces again. Something unnatural lives in the waters of the Fallow Mire and it terrified my scouts long before the Avvar ever took us. The corpses rise up and live again. I have not seen this type of evil since the Blight.
I do not want to die here. None of us do. I am sorry that my leadership has failed and that I led us down this path.
I think the Maker has forsaken this unholy place.
I am sorry Inquisitor.
Harding