If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.
"You are in my chair."
The Inquisitor peeks up from over the top of her book. Her eyes are distant, but she blinks once, tosses her hair and puts on a cheeky smile.
"There's a perfectly good one right there." She nods her head at the plush velvet chair on the other side of Dorian's tiny reading alcove. The mage isn't impressed, sets his hands on his hips in faux annoyance.
"I'm aware of that, oh eminent Inquisitor." Stifles a chuckle when she sticks her nose back in her book and pulls up her long legs, tucking them under herself. Elven grace, easy curving of those sharp angles. "But you're in my chair." The high back, gilded arms and royal blue of his favourite reading chair are far superior to any other chair in the tower. Dorian knows - he tried them all.
"Suck it up, Sparkles." She doesn't deign to look at him this time.
He huffs and drops inelegantly into the chair across from her.
"It's Sparkler. Please."
She laughs at that and finally brings the book down from her face. Dorian rests his hands on the arms of the inferior chair and levels his gaze with hers. Big elven eyes, and green as the woods she'd come from.
"I thought you didn't like the nickname."
He shrugs, looks out the window. In the courtyard below, Cullen and Blackwall are drilling troops. Long lines of big men in armour but the sun glints off their metal and Dorian finds himself glancing away. He tilts his head and graces the Inquisitor with his most charming of smiles.
"It's grown on me I suppose. Like the rest of you. Oddly akin to some sort of parasitic moss, really."
"Foxhood maybe. Or creeping widow."
He chuckles as she drops the names of deadly Tevinter ground-cover like items on a requisition order. Flora and fauna is a subject they are matched in, but before long they fall into their easy who-knows-more-routine.
"And here I thought you specialized not in poison but in herbs to make us all retch. You know, that rootwren you have in your tea."
She laughed at his mention of a plant commonly fertilized with very fresh ram's dung, and the sound of it had whispering mages glancing over to their corner. Rolling eyes, no doubt, because yes they were at it again. The giggling Inquisitor and her renegade Tevinter plaything. He was used to being an object of their attention – whispered about until he walked over to grab a book from a nearby shelf, speculated on until they needed to consult him for some expert opinion.
"For your tea, darling, only stripweed."
The mage crinkles his nose at her statement and glares at the elf. Of course, she would poke fun at his allergies. As if he could ever forget the morning he woke in the Hinterlands, his face a puffy mess of swollen eyes and a running nose. Definitely not his most elegant moment.
"I wonder where you found the time to get so charming," he muses, stroking his mustache in that way she loved to parody. "I mean, between swindling petty crooks in Kirkwall and braiding each other's hair in the woods with your clan, how ever did you manage?"
The grin she throws his way is feral and she stretches her legs out, feet resting over his knees and on his thighs. This time, he is glad to see, her boots are on the ground beside her chair, mud-caked and worn with too much walking.
"Some things we simply don't have to work for, darling." She says in her best Vivienne voice. "Charm is one of my many natural assets."
He snorts and leans forward, letting one hand fall to her ankle while the other picks up her book.
"Wait, wait," she scrambles, suddenly, leaning forward and snatches the tome back but he's already read the title.
Collected Fragments on Foci.
"Sister Iora's work on elven artefacts?"
He can tell by the sudden curve of her eyebrows and the way she won't meet his gaze that this is a conversation the Inquisitor does not wish to have.
"Have you spoken to your father recently?" She says suddenly. It is tactless, and perhaps too soon after she tried to force reconciliation upon Dorian and his father at Redcliffe. The Inquisitor had been so kind. Had accompanied him and rallied him when his father threatened to do what he always did – make it about himself, explain his sacrifices as if the crime he'd committed against his only son were born of noble intentions.
He is annoyed. How can she use his pain to deflect from her own?
"Ellana." He rests his hands on her ankles, clasping them lightly. She wants to flee – he knows the elf is contemplating it, thinking of some slipshod excuse to run off though her gaze rests on the gold-gilded window. But he will not let her. Scholarship is one area where he can be of genuine use and he will do so, even if she tries to make it difficult.
The Inquisitor is still and small in the high-backed chair. The setting sunlight filters through the window pane, catching on the golden piping that spiderwebs across the glass. The shadows that fall on her face look like dancing vallaslin, the mark of her people that makes her almost more conspicuous by its absence. She is an elf without a clan, a hunter marked out for no god.
"You're looking for answers." He says, and for once his words tone is neutral, no mockery, no flippancy. A statement, not a question.
Ellana turns to look at him then. Her hair trips over her shoulders, shoved back from her face by an impatient hand and he notices the dark circles below her round eyes. Is she thinner than usual, or are the sharp cheekbones normal for an elf?
Then, suddenly, she flicks her left wrist and the green light fills their nook. As always, he feels the steady pull on his soul, hears almost-present unearthly whispers, promises of power, in his brain. The mark pulls at him, beckons him closer and closer still.
"Oh, put that away dearest." He swats a hand, aiming for a levity he doesn't quite reach. The others in the tower are not trying to hide their stares. Every scholar worth their salt was dying to understand Ellana's mark. She wasn't normally so blasé with it – the curious eyes and insistent questions of the Inquisition's many scholars were a constant source of annoyance for her.
"Now is hardly the time," he reminds her, leaning forward again to take her book. It falls open to a page she's dog-eared and he reads aloud, if only to force his mind onto something, anything, other than the mark.
"The savages speak to their gods in the cave passage." He recites as the flickering light of Ellana's mark dances over the pages. Did she know what the mark did to him? What it did to all of them? "They call it the Mouth of Echoes. They light fires and feed them with green spruce and shout their questions into the deep. They say answers come to them on the last whispered echo. Superstition, we laughed."
Dorian didn't look up, but he did feel his fingers tighten as her hand formed a fist and the green light blinked out of existence. He almost gasped when he felt the mark retreat – that feeling, like a small vortex that pulled a little part of him into the Fade with it, was the always the same. Taking a little from each of them, over and over again. How much, he wondered, did it take from Ellana?
He swallowed, flipped hair out of his eyes, and tried to look as nonchalant as he wished felt, and kept reading.
"And now Razikale is silent and madness descends." His tongue smoothes easily over the familiar syllables – an Old God of the Tevinters, a she-dragon once worshipped and feared in equal measures. "I can only think, what if? What if there are irregularities in the Veil here? What if we could secure the Avvar cave and bend it to our purposes?"
"You told me that artefacts like Corypheus' orb had a place and name in the Tevinter Imperium of old." Ellana's voice is low, her words almost accusatory. Gone is the mirth of their earlier banter. Why, Dorian thinks, had he pushed for this? Why broach the topic when she so clearly wanted to be left alone – what was wrong with him that he, like everyone else, had to make her face the big questions, looming fears?
"Somnaborium, you said they were called." He glances up through his bangs and sees the elf sitting back in her chair, hands now clasping the arms and her gaze distant as she continued to stare out the window. "The vessels of dreams."
He ignores her and keeps reading.
"The slaves are gathering materials. We will build a shrine to the Dragon of Mystery—implant foci into the walls, cut sacred designs into the stone, the better to hear her with. We will hear her voice again, or we will die."
"They built a temple to Razikale in Minrathous. It's now the Circle Tower, I believe." Her face turns and that heavy emerald gaze meets Dorian's. Her head is tilted slightly to the left and her eyes are cold, distant. "Have you been there, Dorian?"
The mage swallowed again and found himself nodding. Though their postures bore the marks of their odd but implacable friendship, her feet in his lap, his hands holding her book, the friendliness was gone from her expression. He pitied, not for the first time, every enemy that was on the receiving end of her dead and calculating gaze.
"Many times, as a child especially." He shifts in his chair, brings one hand up to his chin. "The high priest of Razikale spoke the same incantation at every Great Mystery." He clears his throat and then speaks words he'd thought he'd forgotten:
"Dragon of Mystery, bestow upon your faithful servants your ineffable truth.
Grant us eyes to pierce the darkness and souls to bear the wounds of your labyrinth."
Ellana steeples her fingers in front of her. Though she looks at Dorian, her eyes do not appear to see him. When she speaks, her voice is soft.
"They say the Razikale will be the next archdemon. Will lead the sixth Blight, a darkness more terrible than any we've seen before."
Dorian finds he cannot hold Ellana's empty gaze. His own eyes drop to the tome in front of him.
"Sister Iora says that fragment was written in blood. Found in the Frostback Basin. Why do you care, Ellana?"
"We will build a shrine to the Dragon of Mystery," the Inquisitor quotes in response. "Implant foci into the walls, cut sacred designs into the stone, the better to hear her with. We will hear her voice again, or we will die."
"Superstition, surely," he says with a dismissive wave, glancing over around them. The other mages have gone back to work, bent over tomes and whispering to each other. But in the circular space, their murmurs are carried back to Dorian and the Inquisitor, indistinct but weighty with speculation. Every now and then he catches curious glances and smiles oversweet smiles at the eavesdroppers.
"Foci like mine, I wonder?" Ellana is turning her left hand over, the one that bears the mark. He cannot see her eyes because her lids are lowered as she studies her own hand.
"Ellana, this is a scrap of gibberish no doubt written by some frothing-at-the-mouth lunatic, driven mad from loneliness and the blasted Ferelden winter."
Dorian leans forward and grabs her hands, pulls them into his own and forces her to look at him.
He is shocked to see tears in her eyes.
"The better to hear her with, Dorian." Her voice is small, her words a whisper.
The mage is floored. The Inquisitor, their fearless leader, their saviour who's thrown back everything the Creators, the Maker, and the Old Gods combined could throw at her.
"No one has heard the Old Gods speak for centuries, Ellana." His tone is soft, he needs to reassure her. A tear slips over one high cheekbone, runs down her cheek.
"Then when can I hear him?" her voice broke and she pulled one hand out of his to cover her mouth. Her face twisted and a sob escaped. "Why do I see him every time I close my eyes? Why does his voice play in my head over and over again?"
She was crying now, ugly and tearful and Dorian found himself shaking. The Inquisitor, broken, in front of him. He did the only thing he could think of.
"Hush, here now." He pulled her over, onto his lap and into his arms, wrapped his arms tight around her. He'd never held a woman like this, tears and shaking shoulders, a small frame bent against the world.
"The vessel of dreams," her mumbled voice broke against his neck. "I see him in my sleep, Dorian. He wants the mark. He's so angry."
"Of course he's angry," he says into her hair, running his hand down her back because he truly doesn't know what to do. This was not who he was – offering comfort, asking for nothing in return. But didn't she see that she wasn't the one that needed to be afraid? Corypheus was a nuisance, certainly, but she was unstoppable. "You've thwarted an evil plot centuries in the making. An impressive feat for someone so small, really."
She hiccups a laugh against his neck but she's still crying.
"He is a living god." She curls even tighter against him and Dorian is beginning to realize that everyone in the tower is staring. "He destroys me over and over again. In my dreams. It mustbe the mark that lets him in."
Suddenly, Dorian knows they need to be somewhere else. As much as he scorns the intricacies of the Game, the nuances of politicking, he knows that the sight of their fearless leader in tears in the lap of unabashedly fabulous Tevinter mage is gossip that's just too delicious to resist. So his arm still around the Inquisitor he stands, forcing her on her feet.
She sniffs, wipes an eye and blinks up at him. He forgets how short she is sometimes.
"Come," he says loudly, for the benefit of all those watching eyes. "Sir Morris needed that iron today, isn't that so?"
She's staring at him with wide elven eyes, red-rimmed and confused. But she nods and that's all he needs. Dorian grabs her hand and strides purposefully out of the room.
Let them think what they will, he decides, annoyed. Couldn't they see how all of their requests, their millions of ceaseless small need and wants, took their toll on the Inquisitor?
Even his own personal favours, asking her to be with him at Redcliffe. How readily Ellana had agreed, he thinks with a backward glance as the uncharacteristically meek elf that trailed behind him. He hadn't once considered that his request, a family reconciliation that honestly had him quaking in his supple leather boots, was probably one of eight things she was getting done that day.
He guides her through Solas' atrium, ignoring the man's questioning glance over his shoulder at them. Maker knew what the elf was painting, long strokes and vibrant colours that were a little too ominous for Dorian's taste.
Dorian pulls the Inquisitor, still holding onto her hand, through the great hall, deftly side-stepping Cullen and privately thankful for Josephine's quick assessment of the situation.
"Give them a moment, Commander," the Antivan tells the handsome blond with a hand on his arm.
And then they are up the stairs and in Ellana's chamber, the one place in all of Skyhold where no one will interrupt the Inquisitor without explicit permission. Where no one will watch and whisper about her conduct, and where no one will openly confront her about her decisions.
He leads her over to her bed and sits her down. Pulls a chair over and sits across from her. Reaches out and lifts her chin so she is meeting his eyes. Feels his heart wrench at the sight of her defeated face, red-rimmed eyes and dark circles.
"Listen, Inquisitor." She needs to remember who she is, what she's already accomplished. "I know little of the ancient magics of the elves, but I suppose that it is possible that somehow, your mark links you to Corypheus."
She swallows. He watches her throat bob before his eyes find her face again.
"He tried to use the orb as a foci for his magic. To channel and empower it. You somehow took a part of that – whatever happened at the Conclave left you with a part of his channel and with the power that comes with it."
Ellana nods slowly. Dorian sees that he's gaining ground. Needs to push further. He reaches forward, pushes hair out of her face and behind her ear. His fingers curl against her neck and he needs her to understand the intensity of his belief.
"But remember this – that link exists because you disrupted his plan. Whatever evils Corypheus sought, you made it impossible for him to achieve his ends. You've taken some of the power he tried to use for yourself."
Dorian's hand falls from her head, take her hands again instead. The elven fingers are slim, small and pale against his own tanned skin.
"You are stronger than him, Ellana."
The elf swallows again and finally, finally, tries to smile at him.
"Thank you Dorian."
"Perhaps you are connected. He will try to exploit that. Try to intimidate you in dreams. To taunt you when you use the mark."
She is nodding slowly. When she speaks, her voice is low and quiet.
"I hear him mocking me. He calls me nothing. A thief."
Dorian smiles crookedly.
"Well, we already that about you."
She chuckles quietly and he is heartened to hear it.
"Now, let me be honest with you."
The smile stays on her face and she pulls his hands out of his, brings her legs up and tucks them under her. Her bed is huge, almost comically so given that she's so small. Varric liked to make fun of it, said it left plenty of room for entertaining.
"This should be good," she replies, expectant.
He grins and crosses his arms, leans back in his chair and delivers:
"You look like shit, dearest."
She laughs and it is good to see the smile on her tired face.
"Well excuse me if cleaning up the Creators-damned world doesn't leave me much time for maintenance."
"You don't see it stopping me from looking fabulous." He replies, with a coy brush at his hair.
"Oh, is that what they're calling that look? And here I thought you were going for the 'Orlesian Tapestry' effect. All style, no substance."
He kicked her gently, but let her have the win.
"Let me do something for you, Inquisitor." There is still a smile in his words, but he is serious.
She raises an eyebrow.
"And here I thought you weren't interested."
"Not that, stupid. Let me cast a spell on you."
"Oh," she replies, a sly smile on her lips. "Is that what you call it when you were seducing that handsome bartender lad at the Crossroads?"
He scoffs.
"Now, now Ellana. You know you're not my type."
"And oh how the regret keeps me up at night."
He grins but he raises a hand to stop her from responding.
"As it should. But in all seriousness. Let me do this for you." He lifts both hands and feels the quiet blue hum of his magic coming to life. It's like breathing to him, to summon it forward, bend it to his will.
"You need to rest, Ellana." He lifts an eyebrow. "You look like shit. Can't have this dishevelled mess on all the Inquisition recruitment posters."
"I'd be more offended if you weren't so right." She leans on one arm, eyes watching his hands warily.
"I can give you a dreamless sleep. You'll be more rested than you've been in weeks."
Emerald eyes meet his and he is a saddened at how hopeful she looks at the prospect.
"You can do that?"
He nods.
"Easiest spell in the book, Gemstone."
She tilts her head again.
"Let me show you," he says, insistent.
"It's the middle of the day."
"Do I have to remind you just how shitty you're looking?"
She laughs and lies back.
"Okay, okay."
Silence and he lets the spell stream forward from his fingers. Whitish blue light that runs across her temple, over her shoulder, down her torso.
"This isn't weird for you?"
"Stop talking, Ellana."
"But what if…"
But the words die before she has time to finish. The sleeping spell is a simple one, and fast working. Dorian had perfected it long ago though it always worked better on others than on himself.
Ellana's head rested lightly on her pillow, chestnut hair across her face. Dorian stands and studies her for a moment. Silly girl didn't even pull a blanket over herself. He unfolds the heavy Ferelden comforter at the foot of the bed and drapes it over her small frame. Her face, he is pleased to see, is still, her brow smooth and unbound from the worries that mark each of her days.
Dorian smiles softly and turns away from the sleeping elf. He wanders over to the large oak desk – her one real indulgence in all of Vivenne's shopping for Skyhold furnishings. It is an ornate and intricate piece of woodwork, scrolling elven patterns and a large surface where she's scattered a dozen different books and scrolls, seemingly halfway through each one.
He sits in her writing chair and looks about. A quill rests on a half-finished report on the Western Approach and beneath that is Cullen's summary of the intel Hawke and Stroud provided on Adamant. They will march on her command and that command will come soon, Dorian knows.
The mage's gaze moves on, and his mouth slips into a smirk as he sees the entire collection of Varric's tawdry novels stacked against the side of the desk, tucked away as if she didn't want anyone to see.
He spots a familiar worn journal and is reaching for it before his mind can even contemplate whether or not he should. He's done a good thing for Ellana – surely she wouldn't mind if he took another peek at her drawings.
There are so many, he reflects as he opens the leather book and flips through. Sera with crumbs on her face and a tray of lumps in front of her – cookies, he suspects. Leliana with a rare and beautiful smile on her face, an outline that might be Cullen shrugging helplessly next to her.
But he finds what he's looking for on the next page and he feels the gasp stop in his throat.
It's his father and him. The old man not angry as Dorian remembered from Redcliffe, but instead wearing slumped shoulders and an expression that is regret personified. Dorian traces his ringed fingers over the charcoal, feeling the black smudge gently against calloused fingertips. His own face is the angry one – Ellana has captured his eyes with an intensity he never knew they had. His eyebrows are bent in unattractive rage and his mouth is open with an accusation he can still remember.
Blood magic, father! Am I so broken that it takes a pact with demons themselves to make me whole again? To make me more your son?
He feels himself inhale sharply and his hands are shaking. He drops the journal on her desk but cannot close it, cannot look away. Below the image, Ellana's small cursive spells out familiar words.
Words winding, she writes. Wanting, wounding. You said I could ask. It's all tangled with love.
Cole's words. You said I could ask. He'd wanted to be an open slate for the hopeless spirit boy but he hadn't realized how much of himself he had to bare to do so. If Dorian had known, he'd never have offered – he was prepared to help so long as it didn't involve airing absolutely every dark secret that lingered somewhere in his mind.
He'd been a fool to assume Cole would need anything less.
"You hold on to him so tightly," the damned spirit had said. "You let it keep hurting because you think hurting is who you are. Why would you do that?"
They were walking through a ramshackle fortress, long abandoned by people and time, and Cole's words echoed embarrassingly loud for all to hear. As always, Dorian tried to shrug it off, hoping his lightness would dispel the ache that Cole's words lodged around his heart.
"Can someone tell him to stop?" Dorian said to no one in particular. "You know, banish him back to the Fade or something?"
Ellana answered after a long moment of silence.
"Cole wants to help, Dorian. Maybe you should let him."
The mage ran his fingers over Ellana's drawing again. Glanced back at her sleeping figure on the bed. It was hard to let others help sometimes. She understood that. At the time, he couldn't let Cole of all people in – he'd said something pithy and stalked off until his embarrassment abated.
He tried to tell Cole later, when they were alone by a stream.
"Sometimes the ones you love are also the ones who disappoint you the most, Cole. You think that if they love you, they should understand. They shouldn't want to hurt you."
Once the words started, they kept pouring out.
"But when they do, you feel betrayed. And you say things you can't ever take back."
Cole, of course, had understood. Better than anyone else in all of Thedas could have understood. Guess the reading minds gimmick made all the difference.
"Get out." Cole had said in a voice that was so perfectly the Magister Halward Pavus that it had Dorian glancing around for his father. "You are no son of mine."
He watched Cole for a long moment – the stickish boy in his too large hat, staring distantly over the creek they stood by.
"Yes," the mage said finally, defeated. "Like that."
Cole looked over and met his eyes, milky blue on deep hazel and so serious.
"He wishes he hadn't meant it."
Dorian can't help the strangled noise that constricts his throat.
He shakes himself out of the memory and scans Ellana's drawing again. His father, wearing regret, and his own face so full of rage.
The mage lets a long breath out of his nose. Behind him, the Inquisitor whimpers softly in her sleep, but he knows she is not dreaming. Seeing only sweet blackness.
His hand tightens into a fist over her drawing but he understands now, between Cole's words and what Ellana had captured in his father's face, that he cannot continue to be so angry. That his rage will purchase nothing and that his father's actions, sealed by time, are at least looked back upon with regret.
His father's good opinion had mattered more than anything else in the world. Even after he'd left, went to study with Alexius.
But now, Dorian realized, there was more. From Ellana and her cause, he'd gained something that mattered more, something to focus on so that he could let the rage fizzle away. After all those years of being useless, he had something to give that other's needed.
In the days that followed, if their companions noticed that Ellana kept Dorian closer than usual, they said nothing. Didn't comment on the fact that every night before she slept, he'd linger nearby in case she needed him. A little magic brought the happy sight of clear skin beneath her eyes and he was secretly so pleased that they shared something that only he could give her.
When Ellana gives the order to march on Adamant a few days later, Dorian is not surprised.
"Hey," she calls out to him as he's stuffing his pack with reading material for the undoubtedly tedious ride ahead. "I have to ask you something. Since I'm going to be leading the charge and all."
Dorian straightens up and turns to face her. The Ellana before him now is bright-eyes and braided hair, standing tall in full black leather armour, her wicked knives strapped to her back and jutting out above her shoulders. She is fierce, shadows and death, their leader.
But when she cocks her head to the side and a few strands of hair fall over her brow, she gives him a grin that reminds him that above all else, they are friends.
"Do I still look like shit?"
He barks a laugh.
"No, your Inquisitorialness. You look like majesty."
"Excellent." She throws him a smile and he knows that it means 'thank you'.
"Now get your sorry Tevinter ass moving." She's turning, walking away and she shouts the words over her shoulders, uncaring of the quiet productivity of the scholars around her. "We've got to beat the pack of nobles Josie drummed up out of the gate or we'll be stuck behind caravans all morning."
"Anything for you, fearless leader." He says, and the best part is that he knows he means it.
Elhan,
I am sorry to hear of the Clan's trouble with Wycome and I am glad you wrote to me for help. I will join you when I can. The Inquisition has resources that may be of use to you and for now I have sent those that I can spare. I pray that we will not be too late and I am grieved that I cannot be with them.
But right now, a more immediate threat weighs on us all. There is an evil behind these rifts, the mark on my hand, the demons across Thedas. I have seen this evil and nearly lost my life to him. We leave to fight him tomorrow and I cannot be delayed. I'm sorry brother.
I will probably die. It's easy to write the words. Harder to think on what they mean. You would balk if you knew how many people I've killed now Elhan. Sometimes I feel like their blood is still there, in my hair, on my arms no matter how many times I wash. I stabbed a man through his jaw and into his skull a fortnight past and Elhan I think I enjoyed it. I wonder what father would say if he could see me now. The Creators would spurn me for the unnatural creature I've become.
I know you will say that it is father who put me on this path, but it wasn't. I could've left Kirkwall at any time, made my way back to you and Keeper Deshanna. I was the one who chose not to, who chose to stay with the Inquisition.
I can't remember if I told you that they made me Inquisitor. You've probably heard. I'm still not used to walking into a village I've never been to and meeting people who know my name and my exploits. Or think they know them anyway. I am a leader now Elhan, your little sister who always followed where you ran.
For that reason my loyalty has to be to the Inquisition before it is to you. I hope you understand. Corypheus, the demon we fight, has to be stopped and somehow I've become the one who has to spearhead the charge to do it.
I am so scared Elhan. I gave a speech to our troops today and I'll have to give another one before we lay siege to Adamant, an ancient fortress that has never before fallen in battle. When I have to find words, lie to them all so they don't know how scared I am, I think of father. And I think of you. Hunters and leaders. Father was always quiet and strong, but your righteousness is what helps me most. You refused to play father's game because you didn't think it was right.
I hope then that you will realize that I have to do what's right here too. I'm worried for you and the Clan, but Corypheus will sacrifice hundreds of lives to raise a demon army and conquer Thedas. I hate that I have to weigh my troubles on a scale, determine which is the most dire, but that's what being the Inquisitor requires.
I am all excuses today. Forgive me. My hands are shaking and I can't stop writing. You don't need more of my selfish justifications.
I'm sorry Elhan. I promise that if I survive Adamant, I will come for you.
Ellana
It was no secret that Fenris had little use for magic. He thought about this as he trailblazed his way up a narrow stone staircase, checking the massive swing of his broad sword so that he didn't throw himself off balance and tumble down the stairs. Behind him, he heard Hawke laughing. Of course she was laughing.
It was no secret Fenris wasn't fond of magic, and blood magic he had absolutely zero tolerance for. These wardens and their demons – it was like Anders and Justice all over again. Everyone has a story they tell themselves to justify their decisions, but it never mattered. It was like Hawke always said: in the end you are always alone with your actions.
They had their reasons, Stroud claimed at the Western Approach. Or so Hawke had told him – as Fenris took the steps into Adamant Fortress two at a time, bringing his blade down and sundering some lesser demon out of existence, he felt his neck bristle again at the memory of Hawke telling him to stay behind.
"You'd hate the desert, dearest." She told him with that playful grin that made him growl. "Sand in all the wrong places." The Champion ran down his breastplate, blue eyes musing. "Can't have it in all these cracks, right?" She peered up at him as her fingers settled in a rift between the two central plates of his armour.
"You're insufferable," he told her, determined not to rise to her game.
She laughed and flipped her hair back. There was nothing like Hawke when she was laughing; alive, a full bodied sound that made his sullenness inexcusable.
"Besides," she said with a deft twist of her hand. "I need you here."
"Now, Hawke?" He put a hand on his hip and raised an eyebrow.
"Not like that," she told him with a narrowing of her eyes though her smile didn't fade. "I want you to watch over these folks," she nodded to the massive keep that loomed behind them. Skyhold, the inexplicable secret fortress where the Inquisition made their home.
"I want you to watch them. I trust Varric but the advisers, the other companions, who knows? Why do they have a warden in their midst if what Stroud says about the calling is true?"
Fenris sighed and crossed his arms.
"Always so suspicious, Hawke."
She's preparing to leave, he realizes as she stuffed her pack full of a dozen sundries that only Hawke could think of uses for – dried entroot, five yards of black cable, an ice pick.
"It's what's kept us alive all these years, ain't it?"
He secretly loves when she slips in the colloquialisms, Old Hawke, he called it back when they'd all lounged around The Hanged Man and she'd had one too many. Hawke when she was just Hawke, before she became the Champion, saviour of the city, liaison to nobility and attempted peace-broker between warring factions.
Fenris wants to reach out and pull her to him. But he knew he had to let her go, let her brave the Approach on her own because this was Hawke after all, and the one thing she could never do is do what she was told.
He is thankful, as his blade finds purchase in an unlucky warden soldier, that she was not foolish enough to forbid him to Adamant. But then he is cursing again as Hawke leaps over his bent back, landing squarely in the middle of three soldiers.
She straightens with a feral grin and his is reminded of all the reasons he loves her.
The Champion of Kirkwall is leather armour and long knives that she flips with a speed his elven eyes cannot follow. She spins and one man is already dead, her tattered scarf a scarlet pennant in the wind around her as she dives at another soldier. He'd called the scarf a liability a hundred times across the years of their friendship, but she'd grinned that Hawke grin and told him she was nothing without a little style, a trademarked image of waving red silk and knives for her enemies to remember.
Hawke's blades are like extensions of herself, and though he's always chided her for her recklessness in battle, he's also known that landing a blow on the woman was near impossible for most.
The wardens are dying in warm pools of blood before even as he ascends the final steps to join her on the battlement.
"Must you always be so dramatic?" His tone is dry. They always made time for a little chatter when deep in the thick of battle.
"Coming from the six foot tall glowing elf with a blade the size of Orlais." She retorts, her grin made more savage by the blood that's splattered across her pale skin.
"Hawke. This is hardly the place to comment on the size of my blade."
She cackles and nods down into the courtyard below.
"The Inquisitor is in. Looks like Cullen has sent her to clear the battlements."
Hawke is already starting to move again, a light jog that he knows will give way to an all-out sprint.
"And here I thought that's what we were doing," Fenris replies drily.
"Well come on then," Hawke yells over her shoulder as he groans and takes off after her. Easy for her to say in her leathers, not laden with four stones of metal armour and gear like he was. "Can't let her beat us to it."
They continue to fight, and Fenris can feel the lyrium light up his skin. His glow gives his enemies pause, and resent the marks though he does, he is not above taking advantage of that brief hesitation in his foes. Often, they are dead before they can even recover.
His is distantly aware of the Inquisitor and her companions making headway on the battlement across from them. His is not surprised to see her fighting to secure the walls so that her troops can enter, instead of pushing further into the keep. His spying at Skyhold had taught him little except that that Inquisitor is well-loved, said to value the lives of her soldiers. Some whispered of a daring rescue and a duel against an Avvar warlord. Others spoke of the dragons she'd slain, evidence of which loomed ominously over the throne in their great hall.
Fenris recognized the signs of devotion and myth-making. He'd lived through that all before in his service to Hawke. He wondered at the truth behind the whispers – the Inquisitor was such a small thing, an elf with no markings. But Hawke seemed to approve of her, and that was enough for him.
As he fought, he scanned the area around the Champion constantly. Hawke could lose herself in battle sometimes, and that left her oblivious to new opponents and sneak attacks. Fenris made sure that none of those ever reached her, and though she danced around him with a stamina he couldn't hope to match, he knew that Hawke was tiring too.
And when the ground below the Champion exploded, he realized they might really be in some trouble.
The pride demon that surged forth was an ugly thing, bulging veins and a cascading purple whip that zipped too close to his head. Fenris jumped back and fell into a defensive stance in front of Hawke as the woman groggily got back on her feet.
"Just like old times." He yelled back at her, desperate for her to respond. Be alert, be ready. They'd blazed forward ahead of Cullen's troops and Stroud was somewhere distant, claiming another battlement for the Inquisition. It was only him and Hawke and the demon.
"Which old time?" He hears her answer as she pushes herself up from the ground. Though her voice is hoarse he's relieved to hear a teasing tone to her words. "When Bartrand left us for dead in the Deep Roads? Or when you demonstrated your enduring loyalty to me in the Fade?"
Fenris barks a laugh, sinking lower into his stance as the demon growls and turns on him. When you fight a pride demon, you always let it move first. It was slow and lumbering, and if your reflexes were good enough, you could often hit it in that moment after it raised an arm to strike.
"There are too many demons in our past, Hawke."
"I'll say," she comments and then she's on his back and leaping off his shoulders and up into the air.
"Dammit woman!" She was never one for patience.
The Champion landed on the demon's back, sliced twice at its shoulders and neck and then launched herself away. The creature roared, an unearthly sound that shook the ground below their feet, and Fenris swung his blade.
Hawke danced around the demon, feinting in and out and keeping it distracted while Fenris could wail away at its hamstrings. This strategy was as old as time to them, and maybe that's what made him careless. He missed it when Hawke leaped closer and the demon ignored her, turning to face Fenris instead. Fenris, caught mid-swing, couldn't stop his blade in time to dodge the pride demon's massive fist. The fist connected square with his chest and sent him skittering, metal and scraping sounds across the stone surface of the battlement.
For a moment, blackness threatened to claim him.
No, he thought fiercely, feeling his marks alight as he fought to hold onto consciousness. Was it just his addled head or had someone appeared before him?
"Well," a voice sounded, low and feminine. His vision swam but if he squinted, he could make out two dark boots just in front of him. "Looks like we got here just in time."
Fenris groaned and rolled onto his back, forcing his eyes to focus. Above him stood an elf in dark leather, brown hair pulled back from her face in a series of thin braids. Like Hawke, her face was splattered with blood, two wicked curving knives at her side.
The Inquisitor.
The demon didn't last much longer. Fenris was rather embarrassed that he spent the rest of the fight nursing his head on the sidelines and trying to encourage the dents out of his plate mail.
"Don't worry Chuckles," Damnable Varric was at his side, loading and unloading his crossbow with the ease of an Antivan noble sipping coffee on a balcony in the summer. Classic Varric, working too hard to make everything look easy. "I'm sure you'd have been fine without us."
"Shut up dwarf." He growled in response. His standard Varric-reply.
"Eloquent as ever, I see." Varric's hand moved lightning fast, up to his quiver and down to his crossbow. "It must be your astute conversational abilities that our Champion finds so endearing."
He grunted in reply, uncaring of the irony that made Varric grin. He was happy to remain seated on a crate next to the dwarf – the others clearly needed no help with the fight. To be fair, the Inquisitor and her team had numbers on their side.
The elf woman had not one but two mages behind her, another elf and that Tevinter magister that made Fenris' blood boil. An awkward teenager with knives and a too-big hat stood near the edge of the battlement, shouting words to the others. The Seeker woman and the so-called warden braced in front of the demon, soaking up its blows on their shields while Hawke and Ellana brought it down with a dozen little strikes.
As one last flurry of lightning engulfed it, the demon shuddered and fell. Over its corpse, the Champion and Inquisitor grinned at each other.
"I think they're more alike than they realize," Varric muttered, swinging Bianca onto his back and Fenris couldn't help but nod.
"We're going to find Clarel. Stroud said it was this way." Ellana nodded to a set of stairs that led deeper into the fortress. The elf turned and leveled her gaze with Hawke. "Can you keep the demons off my troops?"
Hawke shook her head.
"Nonsense. Your men are fine. You bought them a foothold and Cullen is leading them."
Fenris felt his heart sink. He knew what she was going to say. It was classic Hawke: the more dangerous, the more she needed to be there. Why does it always have to be you? He must have asked her a dozen times.
"We're going with you."
Fenris sighed and fell in line behind the Inquisitor and her team.
"Cheer up Broody." Varric was still at his side, bringing up the rear. "The safest place to be is usually right smack dab next to the Inquisitor. Have you seen that thing she does with her hand?"
He had seen it on their march to Adamant and it made him feel sick to his stomach. The green of the elf's hands pulled at the lyrium in Fenris' skin; he felt it come alive when Ellana activated her mark, felt like the lines of magic wanted to jump right out of his flesh.
Damnable, blasted magic. He couldn't escape it no matter how far he ran. Clarel was the perfect example – someone who had years of training and a centuries old legacy behind her to ensure that she should have known better. But when they found her in the courtyard, presiding over her legion of brainwashed wardens, warden commander Clarel proved she was no better than the rest. Everyone was an Anders when push came to shove it seemed. She butchered another warden before them all and it took Erimond summoning a blasted archdemon to make the woman see sense. Of course, she was a mage too.
Fenris pushed up until he was next to Hawke for the fight in the courtyard, but he could tell that both she and the Inquisitor were eager to be done with the demons here, itching to follow Clarel and Erimond through the massive wooden doors at the far end of the courtyard.
Well, if that was what Hawke wanted, that was what Hawke would get.
Fenris set his sights on the rage demon between the two women and the door and launched himself into battle. He lit his marks up, alive with the sick and deadly energy he hated so much, and reached a hand into the chest of the flaming demon. His fingers tightened around the orb at the center of the creature, and with a yell he wrenched backward, pulling the rage demon's "heart" along with him.
The demon shuddered once and then dissipated.
He looked over his shoulder.
Ellana and Hawke stood, identical expressions of surprise on their face.
"What?" He asked, revelling briefly in their shock. "He was in your way."
Hawke laughed but Ellana's expression was static. He decides there's time for one more jibe.
"You're not the only one with glowing powers and hands of death, Inquisitor."
She tilts her head and studies him and Fenris realizes this is the first time they have really spoken.
"You'll have to tell me more later." She says, tone thoughtful, and then she is striding forward, past him again. A small elf for so much might. Her arms are soaked in blood, her blades sharp and evil in her hands.
I'll do no such thing. He thinks after the Inquisitor, falling in just behind Hawke. Stroud, he is pleased to see, is at their side. Stroud is a good man. Does not demand things of Hawke the way everyone else does.
After today Hawke and I are gone. Off to be somewhere free of all this. Maybe we'll finally find some quiet. Put our feet up and take some easy jobs for people who really need it. He feels himself almost smiling at the thought.
But then they are out in the courtyard and the archdemon is back, its cataclysmic wings buffeting them away. The Inquisitor's troops scatter in the wake of the fire the dragon breathes. The dragon snatches Clarel up like a rag doll – the foolish warden leader doesn't even have time to scream. Fenris, even after all the death he's seen, felt a ripple of shock as the demon made mincemeat of the woman.
At least dragons are better than magic, Fenris thinks grimly as he settles into a battle stance and the archdemon lands. The Inquisitor widens her stance in front of him and he can see that she and Hawke are preparing to fight. Mark or no mark, this battle will be dire. Even Hawke and he have never fought a demon like this.
The dragon is glistening terror, its scales reflecting the light of their magic, of the brewing storm above, and of the torches that line the bridge. Its black eyes are endless and its teeth are slick with the blood of the warden commander who crawls feebly between its feet.
When it roars, Fenris feels his heart lurch. It has been many years since he has known fear for his own safety – the need to protect Hawke had long supplanted that – but today, in the face of the sheer vastness of the archdemon, he admits that there is a slight tremble in his knees. His is impressed to see the Inquisitor's companions form up behind her – both mages and even the teenage boy stand at the ready. Blackwall, the warden of whom Fenris could learn very little, and the Seeker Cassandra who interrogated Varric so harshly, stand staunch next to the little elf that leads them. Others fan out behind Fenris, having finally fought their way through the courtyard and onto the bridge.
They are prepared to fight and die. At Hawke's side, Fenris has made this choice so many times before. It seems unfair that the universe continues to demand it from Hawke, but Fenris learned long ago that fairness had no say in the court of everyday life.
They are prepared for a fight that never comes. The warden commander spares and dooms them all in equal measure; her lightning sends the dragon sideways and up, splinters the bridge on which they all stand and suddenly they need to run.
Blocks crumble beneath his feet and Fenris is desperate for purchase. Hawke is just a step or two behind him. Fenris sees her reach out to steady Varric but he spies over her shoulder that the Inquisitor is stooped to help her friend, Solas, over the ledge.
Hawke glances back and sees the Inquisitor too. The stones beneath the elf begin to give way.
Hawke looks forward again and meets Fenris' eyes. The electric blue of her gaze is determined and he can feel himself speaking before he even knows what he will say.
"No. Hawke. Don't."
Hawke is too far. He cannot reach her in time. She will be too late for Ellana. Why does she have to try?
Because she is Hawke, she tries.
Hawke dives back, grabs the Inquisitor by the shoulders and heaves. The bridge rumbles a final time and they all stumble, the two women and the elf Ellana had saved. They are a tangled mess of limbs on the stones that give way beneath them.
Hawke's face twists and those eyes, blue and alive, meet his.
And then they are gone.
Lost in the darkness as the bridge sunders. Others too are over the edge but Fenris is somehow damnably on solid ground. Half turned and frozen in place, his blood-soaked blade heavy in his hand.
Fenris does not register the others who fell. He stands, stock still, as the trembling in the ground beneath them stops. He curses every god he knows that somehow he has survived this.
He is oblivious to the flash of green light that shines up from over the edge of the bridge. He knows only one thing.
Hawke is gone.