Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets
Solas breathes sharply through his nose. The air is dead, stagnant and the weight in his limbs is just slightly off, neither heavier nor lighter than the norm, but simply different.
Next to him, Cole is losing his mind.
"Not here. Not like this. When I became me I made myself forget this place."
"Hush," he tells the boy in his most reassuring tone. His hands grip the spirit's shoulders, feel Cole's shaking. The boy looks frantically about himself, milky eyes wide and a part of Solas understands his terror deeply.
The raw fade. Solas looks around as well. The Inquisitor is hovering just a few feet from him, her dark eyes surveying their surroundings with wonder. Slowly, some invisible force drops her so that her feet connect with the jagged stone plain.
"This looks nothing like the last time I was in the Fade." Hawke's voice, coming from where the woman is standing unfathomably at a ninety-degree angle above them, echoes oddly.
"What, no friends stabbing you in the back at the slightest provocation from a demon?" Varric is pulling himself up off the ground, glancing up at his friend.
Solas looks down at his own hands and is grateful that he has been able to keep his simple form, even in as unnatural a place as this. Cole is calming slowly next to him, though the boy still trembles.
"What did you do, Inquisitor?" Cassandra always calls the elf by her official title when in the company of others. The Seeker's principles, it seems, are unshaken by their sudden relocation. Classic Cassandra, unafraid and forever seeking reason.
"I saw a light." Stroud, the warden, walks towards Ellana. "You brought us through to this place."
"She sundered reality." Solas says, authoritative and direct. Even decades after walking amidst them, it astonished the elf how little most mortals understood of the planes beyond their own.
"She ripped a whole in the fabric of the universe and brought us into this realm. This is unlike the Fade of my dreams."
"And mine as well. The Fade is never quite this… dank." Dorian's voice surprises Solas - so many of them the Inquisitor had saved from an inelegant death, bodies broken in the valley below Adamant.
Despite being suspended upside down, Dorian managed a delicate rumple of his nose in disgust. No matter how accomplished a scholar he was, Solas was little amused by the Tevinter's endless need to make light of every situation.
"I sure hope so. Maker knows how anyone could rest looking at this shit."
Varric's words weren't wrong. The land around them leaked an eerie green light, not unlike the mark that strummed softly in Ellana's palm. Jagged rocks jutted out from the swampish ground at irregular angles, and all around them a chilly damp wind swirled.
"Fascinating," he finds himself saying.
"No, no, they will see me and they will know. They will bring me back."
"We'll keep you safe, Cole." Ellana, of course, would default to comforting, ensuring safety instead of taking action.
"You," Hawke, by contrast, is all action. She nods at Solas and the elf casts her a dismissive glance. Champion of Kirkwall seemed unfit title for a woman who fled the city when it gave way to flames. "You seem to know something of this place. How do we get out?"
"Are we dead?" The mustached warden is still blinking in wonder.
Solas snorts.
"We are not dead. We are suspended between realms." He nods to the swirling black in the distance. "The Black City is so close we could certainly reach it."
"And that is all the hubris from mages I need for one day." Hawke is striding forward then, rests a gauntleted hand on Ellana's arm.
"Is that where we came through?" The human asks the elf with a gesture towards a distant swirling mass of green.
Ellana sighs. "I don't know, but staying here and moping is not an option."
They agree and move out, feeling small against the endless stretch of the bleak terrain around them. Paltry mortals, Solas thinks not for the first time. Their hope that they could triumph against a foe like Corypheus spoke volumes to their naivety. The darkspawn weilded some of Solas' own might through the sundered orb and aborted ritual with the Divine. Not enough to kill the blasted mage, and yet not enough to free Solas' powers indefinitely.
Instead, the power contained within the orb had been fractured, the larger half with the Tevinter's magister and a smaller slice, just enough to be significant, resting in the palm of Ellana Lavellan. Cast from her clan, petty thief made leader of the world's last hope for order. The object of so much speculation. What Solas felt for Ellana was at first just clinical curiosity: how had someone so small and feeble held his power without consequence? He had checked it as best he could that fateful day when they found Ellana in the rubble of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and he was certain she would die then chained to the floor in a dungeon below Haven.
He was prepared to accept her as another elven casualty in his fight to reclaim what his people were owed. How could a frame so slight contain the power of an ancient force like Fen'harel?
But somehow, Ellana had survived. Whether it was Solas' intervention or her own will, he would never know. She bent his magic to her will time and again and he felt it pull on his soul each instance she activated the mark.
What began as wonder turned into admiration. Ellana was nothing but she did not quit. She stood up time and again and accepted the duties, various and numerous though they were, that her advisers placed on her. Like the Hero of Ferelden, her actions showed the world that elves were not to be dismissed.
What does he feel for her now, he wonders as he watches the Inquisitor talk with Hawke up ahead. Varric trails behind the Champion and Dorian is at Cole's side, trying to keep his words light and distracting for the spirit. Stroud closes the formation at the back, followed by Cassandra who's steely gaze remains vigilant. They are a disparate and unlikely band of men and women, locked into a place that shouldn't exist. The fade without its artifices - a place so unlike the realm where Solas wanders when he dreams.
Ahead he watches Ellana drift away from Hawke, her gaze perturbed. What does it mean for Solas - remnant of an ancient time when mortals were powerful enough to wear the title of god, to fend off the ravages of time - that he sees that worried expression on the Inquisitor's face and finds himself needing to remedy it? Solas speeds up to a jog and places himself at the elf's side.
"What troubles you, da'len?"
He can read the worry in her brow, the frantic energy in her usually measured step. He admits that even he does not like the alien feel of the raw fade around them, but Ellana looks positively queasy.
"We didn't all make it." She says, her voice low. Behind them, he can hear Hawke and Varric bantering though their words do little to lighten the oppressive weight of the place. "Bull and Blackwall. Vivienne. Sera. Hawke's elven friend."
Ah. Of course it would be thoughts of the others.
"We cannot know what transpires back at Adamant." She doesn't glance at him when he replies, keeps her gaze instead trained on the rugged path before them. "All we can do is tend to our own survival."
She lets out a noise of frustration.
"Do they mean nothing to you, Solas?"
He's shocked at her bitter words, feels his eyes widen. Solas is unused to surprise - there is little that can be novel after one has lived as long as he has. But callousness from the Inquisitor is uncommon. He says nothing, but in his mind, he grabbles with her words as she stalks away from him.
What did the Inquisition mean to him? He'd started down this path so long ago. Acquire the magister's complaince with the orb. The orb would kill Corypheus surely, and Solas would regain his former powers, bring a blight upon those who had for so long oppressed his people.
Instead, what had he found? His steps are quiet as he trails after the Inquisitor, too muted in the cavernous plains that surround their small band.
He'd found one of his own - an elf blessedly unmarked by the slave brands that her foolish people clung to. Refreshingly open-minded and stalwart in her quest for understanding. He knew that above all else, an explanation for the mark was what drove Ellana. If he prayed, which, for him, would be painfully ironic gesture, he'd pray for only one thing - that Ellana never knew of the answers he held close to his breast.
And beyond Ellana, there were men and elves and qunari and halflings who demonstrated a range of emotions that he was frankly too tired to contemplate. Love and loyalty. Generosity and valour. Selfishness and cowardice and the ardent desire to be better. It had been so long since he spent much time in the company of mortals. His plan, once so sound and so justified, became complicated by the patent goodness that the Inquisitor seemed to bring out in everyone.
They meet Justinia, or a fragment of her, and the Seeker came undone. The spirit of Justinia explains where they are and what it might mean, though her words are frustratingly cryptic for the Inquisitor who interrogates her. Her words mean something to Solas though - with growing trepidation, he realizes exactly where in the Fade they are. What they face. This is the place where Corypheus has locked away Ellana's memories. The place where the Nightmare reigned.
The Nightmare was a spirit the others whispered of in hushed tones and even Solas had never seen its like. Vast beyond comprehension, some spirits said, while others spoke of the pleasant bliss He could grant you if you had lived too long and seen too much. But the Nightmare never returned memories: once again, Ellana's determination worked miracles.
In the unnatural void of the raw fade, Solas' prayer for anonymity came very close to dissolution. Ellana encountered one memory after another and Cassandra was eager in pursuit of that blasted Chantry leader. Justinia knew nothing of Solas' involvement, of course; she was just a pawn in place to allow the orb to awaken. But who knows what Corypheus had said in the dark of the Temple before the ritual.
Solas felt the nervousness strum along his veins with each memory the Inquisitor encountered - would this be the one that revealed his role in the plot?
While the others debate Justinia's true nature, spirit or demon, real relic of the woman or well-meaning construct of this place, Solas keeps his eyes on Ellana. She stands before them all, gaze downcast, looking at the hand that bears the mark. Her hair falls over her forehead, blocks his view of those emerald eyes.
"They mean something to me." He says softly, hating himself a little because it's true. Decades locked away and all it took was the sound of her laughter, the comradery and revelry of a few good men and women, to undermine his convictions. Not enough to erase them, certainly, but Solas isn't quite sure what he wants anymore.
Ellana glances over at Solas – he hadn't realised she could hear him. The elf is regaining her past, assaulted by memories that had been kept from her by design, but she seems unfazed. Is, for the moment, holding it together. Probably in the same fashion that Dorian had reported after Redcliffe: she found the strength for when she needed it, the Tevinter had said. Afterwards, though, Solas remembers the haunted look in her eye as she ghosted from room to room at Haven. Could she survive something like this too - knowing that she was not Andraste's chosen, but rather a lucky interloper who threw all plans into disarray?
The knowledge that the Divine, leader of Thedas' dominant religion, was made the object of a sacrifice, happened upon by a foolish elf, upended everything that common rumours spouted about Ellana. Cassandra and the elf have always been close, but he looks back at the Seeker, trailing behind them all with disconsolate grief on her face, and he wonders if their friendship will survive. A mentor who's death seemed so patently linked to the survival of a friend.
"I'm sorry I said that." Ellana's voice is soft next to him and he is startled out of his thoughts. The memories and thoughts that threaten to overwhelm him are making him oblivious: the raw fade likely had something to do with it. Stewing doubt. Letting worries fester. Giving birth to the fears that the Nightmare fed upon with glee.
"It wasn't fair and you were right." Ellana's expression is hard and her green eyes are locked on the path ahead. She shows none of the surprise the others expressed when they learned that it was a fluke, stars aligning, that made her their leader. "There is nothing we can do for the others now. We need to focus on ourselves."
He takes her hand without thinking, intertwines his fingers in with hers and she glances over, faint surprise in the widening of her eyes. He cannot deny that he has always found her beautiful, though that is likely in part because of the mark. His power, radiating out from her palm. A part of him always with her, though she is oblivious to the fact.
The Inquisitor smiles softly at him and her fingers squeeze against his in return. They stay like that, hand in hand, until the being that holds her memories begins to rumble.
Perhaps I should be afraid. Facing the most powerful members of the Inquisition.
They stop suddenly and everyone's weapons are up, Ellana's hands out of his and her knives at the ready. But Solas knows better. He does not move to grip his staff because this is fear without form, a power they cannot defeat with bows and blades. The Nightmare is everywhere at once, and they are in his playground.
Are you afraid, Cole?
Ellana whirls and her green eyes lock onto the pale boy trailing behind Stroud. She steps up to him and puts an arm around his shoulders as he whimpers. Dorian stands closer to the pair, his staff raised and ready as if desperate to do something against the voice that knows so much.
I can help you forget the horrors of this place. What was done to you. Just like you help others forget.
"To forget," Cole mutters. "Is to unknow and after all of this," he looks into Ellana's eyes and she smiles at him, reaches out to clasp his wrist. "I don't want to unknow." The boy whispers at the Inquisitor.
We're so very alike, you and I. The voice is sinister and omnipotent; Solas feels it in his chest. It is unfair for the Nightmare to tear apart the poor spirit. Cole is nothing but compassion and kindness; he does not have the skills to combat a foe like this one.
Nightmare's voice fades but he continues to plague them as they proceed.
Your Inquisitor is a fraud, Cassandra. Yet more evidence that your Maker does not exist.
With each word in that empty voice, Solas feels something akin to panic in his veins. It is clear the demon sees and knows much. How much, he wonders, can the creature read about him? A place like this with spirits like the Nightmare threatened the secrets Solas has tried so hard to bury. But he is not the creature's next target.
Once again, Hawke is in trouble because of you, Varric. You found the red lyrium. You brought her here.
"And you can go and stuff it now." Hawke injects before Varric even has a chance to retort. But then the words whittle away at Hawke herself and at Dorian for being so much like his father.
They scamper over stones and dispense with demons when they have to. The enemies look different to each of them, spiders for Varric and black magic wisps for Dorian. The Tevinter mage explains before Solas has to; in this place, the demons take the forms of their fears, different for each of them and calculated for maximum terror.
As the party approaches the green vortex that might promise their escape, Solas begins to think that he will leave this place unscathed by the Nightmare's taunts, his secret intact.
But then:
Dirth ma, harellan. Words in the ancient tongue and Solas is shocked to hear it spoken. Ma banal enasalin.
Tell me Trickster, did your victory amount to anything?
Funny that the demon gave him so much credit, Solas reflects. He'd never truly known victory against the so-called Creators, against Mythal and her ilk. And he'd failed yet again with Corypheus and the orb. What victory could he comment on, really? But Nightmare's haunting voice pressed on:
Mar Solas ena mar din.
Your pride will be your death.
Well, about that, the demon was probably right. Ellana glanced at him, curious, and Solas knew he had to say something. To retort it like the others has.
"Banal nadas," he says, tone dry.
Nothing is inevitable, he tells the spirit. The Nightmare spoke truly after all.
Ellana was still watching him, eager for a translation that he would not deliver. Dorian's expression is thoughtful and he wonders how skilled the man's elvish was. The language the demon spoke was long dead, but who knew what troves of knowledge the Tevinters hoarded, dirty spoils from their shameless ransacking of the lands of Solas' people.
Instead of asking for his meaning, the Inquisitor turns away from Solas. He hears her repeat words the Divine had spoken.
"Without fear and pain and failure, we cannot learn. We cannot grow." She clenches her fists tight and they press on. The Nightmare promises to take away the parts of themselves that they do not want to face. Solas sees in the determination of Ellana's eyes and realizes that she'd rather have the truth, however unglamorous it may be.
You cannot grow until you recover all that was taken from you. Justinia understood, then, that Corypheus' strength came from his knowledge. He understood the arcane magic he dabbled in, wrapped them up in the spells and the spirits before the Inquisition had a chance to find him and cut off his head. From Justinia, the Inquisitor was learning that it was knowledge and understanding more than strength of arms and loyalty that would enable her to defeat the magister.
Solas could offer her so much. He could balance the spectrum, give her the same advantage that Corypheus had and help her understand what it all meant. The mark, the orb, the rifts. But as he watched the elf pull herself over a ledge, her muscles flexing, he suspected it would be better if she came to the truth on her own.
They were so close now. Over another stone ridge towards the swirling mists that would hopefully spell their escape. But Ellana had one last memory to take in. Her mark comes alive and Solas tenses behind her as he and the others are plunged into the past.
The elf and the matron are at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, the older woman poised at the top of a towering stone spire, stooped to help Ellana up as ghastly spiders scale the wall behind her.
"The demons!" The Divine yells, hoisting Ellana up and onto the precipice where the Breach swirls angrily. They sprint towards the green vortex.
"Keep running!" Ellana yells as they head towards the Breach.
But Justinia screams and Ellana is turning, too late to pry the demons off the older woman's legs. The Divine looks up and her eyes are wise and sad.
"Go," she says.
And Ellana does.
The ground shifts and they are back in the oppressive damp of the raw fade. The Inquisitor stands small and helpless before them all. Divine Justinia's spirit smiles softly at her.
"It was you…" Ellana whispers and even Solas is surprised. He knew only that Ellana must've interrupted the ritual. He thought that the elf's survival was the product of his mark; his power, vested in her, saving her from the force of the explosion Corypheus caused. This outcome was unexpected. What did it mean that Ellana's survival was not the product of his own might, but rather stemmed from the selfless sacrifice from a woman of another race?
"They thought it was Andraste sending me from the fade." The Inquisitor's words are soft and slow, full of wonder. "But it was the Divine behind me."
Cassandra walks slowly up to stand next to Ellana. Like the elf, she is regarding the spectre before them with an expression of awe.
"And then you…" Ellana continues, eyes wide and voice heavy with the weight of realization. "She died."
Justinia inclined her head and Solas was struck by the nobility of the action.
"Yes." The old woman said finally.
"So this creature is simply a spirit," Stroud said, as Cassandra's shoulders slumped. Of course, the fade creature was not truly the Divine, Solas thought. Not in the way that the Seeker had hoped, anyway.
"You don't say," Hawke's interjection is flat, mirthless and it is on the Champion that the Divine's ghost levels her gaze.
"I am sorry if I disappoint you." The spectre says. The icy blue eyes are heavy on Hawke and Solas reminds himself that if anyone has a reason to mistrust magic, it is the Champion. The woman who, after magic destroyed or took what was left of her family, sided with mages anyway. Solas has never had much patience for the human idol worship that turned women like Hawke into living legends. But like this creature of the fade, he too recognizes the loss that Hawke has suffered.
The Divine then inexplicably begins to glow, is split apart by a light form a dozen directions, shining out until she coalesces into glowing golden outline of a woman.
"Are you her spirit?" Ellana asks the floating woman but no answer comes from the light.
"What we do know is that the mortal Divine died at the Temple because of the wardens that turned against her." Hawke's tone is bitter as she throws the words at Stroud.
"The wardens did not know their own minds." Stroud says defensively. "Corypheus -"
"Demons can't do shit to those who know how to resist, Stroud." Hawke is angry. Solas cross his arms and stands next to Varric, disappointed in how easy it is to drive mortals to ire.
"We will discuss this once we are back at Adamant," Stroud insists, ever the diplomat.
"Assuming that the demon army that your order raised hasn't turned the Inquisition into mabari food while we've been stuck here!" Hawke jabbed a finger into the warden's chest, but the stoic man refused to let her win.
"Who are you to judge us? You who tore Kirkwall apart and started the mage rebellion."
"I was protecting innocent mages, not madmen drunk on blood magic! But you can't imagine that Stroud, because you can't see a world without wardens! Even if that's exactly what the world needs."
"Now, now," Dorian is injecting. "Be careful what you say or you'll call down another blight on us and be sorry you asked for that."
"I don't know," Varric, on Solas' other side, speaks up. "The wardens do have an awful tendency of going crazy."
Wardens, Seekers, Templars - the Chantry and the Magisterium. These mortals needed their constructs so much. Solas stayed silent while the argument brewed. The Inquisitor stood by Cassandra's side, her back to all of them and her chin up to watch the entity that had worn the Divine's face. The spirit creature was beginning to fade, its glow retreating with it.
Then suddenly, the shrieking around them wasn't just the wind.
"The Nightmare has found us." Justinia's voice rang out again before her spirit sundered into a small golden flame, whirring away from them. Solas swung his staff up and looked back to Ellana.
"Now is not the time for this!" The elf yells to her companions, knives appearing in her hands.
Hawke and Stroud met each other's eyes and nodded.
"Form up," Stroud's accented words were firm.
"I'm with you," Hawke seconded.
Too much personality for one party, Solas thought as they leaped into motion. They begin to run, chasing after the retreating golden light of the Divine. The shrieking, a noise like a thousand dying demons wailing against their ears, increases in volume, but they seem to be escaping. The curving wicked edges of the rocks beneath their feet give way to smoother, unearthly plains and an irrational part of Solas laments that he cannot stay longer to analyze this realm.
But the Nightmare will not leave them be.
Do you think you can fight me? I am your every fear come to life! The demon army you fear? They are bound through me. I command them.
Ah. Solas understood now. Corypheus' dominance over this mighty creature was enabled by his power gained through the orb. And it was through the Nightmare that his demon army was possible - demons always bowed to those of their kinds who were stronger, vaster. Justinia's spirit puts his thoughts into words.
"So if we banish you," her voice echoes around them, an Orlesian accent on the rocks. "we banish the demons. Thank you, every fear come to life."
Solas smirks though they all keep running. A human though she was, the Divine seemed like someone that Solas could have respected.
Dorian and him turn and launch lightning backwards - the spiders that trial them are fast and determined. Other demons rise out of the ground before them, but the Inquisitor's party is numerous and skilled, and the aspects of the Nightmare are quickly reduced to flailing limbs and green ooze.
It is only when they witness the Nightmare itself that Solas begins to doubt their success.
He is a vast creature, spreading endlessly into the horizon, a mess of writhing limbs and cascading darkness. His evil majesty silences even Dorian and Varric - they all stop short as it lumbers into their view, positioning itself effortlessly between them and the swirling portal that promises them escape.
A massive, bulbous leg leaps forward, slams into the ground in front of them.
"Go!" Ellana yells and Solas leads her companions onward - Varric, Cole, Dorian and Cassandra all trail after him. Her words are their motivation - they have seen their saviour fall and rise once, and it does not even occur to them that they should linger in this empty place and fight.
But Ellana, Solas is shocked to realize as he glances over his shoulder, is not following. She stands with Hawke on one side and Stroud on the other, her gaze level with the Nightmare.
The creature has let them pass, Solas realizes, because they are nothing to its mind. The Inquisitor is the true quarry.
"Go!" The elf yells again, meeting Solas' gaze across the spread of rocks and mist. The others turn then and Cassandra realizes what is happening. Again. Ellana planning to stay as she sends them through to safety.
The Seeker and the others move back towards their leader, but Solas reads in Ellana's face that this is one thing he can do for her. When did his distant curiosity turn into this type of loyalty, a small part of him wonders?
Whatever fate awaits her in this place between life and death, she does not wish it upon her friends. A request, a pleading in her eyes and Solas cannot ignore that. Whatever she is to him, whatever it means that she is the one who barred his success at the conclave - he cannot think on these things now.
Instead, he turns and spreads his arms, staff out. Dorian, Varric, Cole and Cassandra freeze.
"We are leaving." He says, flat, and then his magic is lacing out of him, a buffeting wind that throws the four of them through the green vortex.
He turns and sees Ellana nod gratefully. The Nightmare lumbers forward again and a swinging foot just grazes Solas' arm, causing the elf to stumble.
Hawke and Stroud are both speaking at once, but Solas is too far away to hear the words.
Instead, he turns and steps towards the portal.
One last look at Ellana. She is listening to the warden and the Champion, but her eyes remain on Solas.
Go, they say. That same self-sacrifice, that need to put others before her.
He steps through, and all he knows is nothingness.
The anchor lingers.
There are moments when her mind disconnects, lets go, affixing to the present, to Dorian's smirk and Varric's muttered witticisms that couch a heartfelt 'thank you'. But then it flares, not with its telltale green hue, but with an insistent pinch, a searing heat along the central seam of her left palm, as if to chastise her for forgetting its presence.
Ellana thinks on it more after Adamant. After she made with it, sundering reality open instead of containing, closing, compartmentalizing Thedas from the Fade in the way she always had. After she scrapped open a dizzying channel, building a pathway to the place where she imprisoned Stroud for life.
The anchor lingers, and, after Adamant, it mocks her. With it, she had sealed a good man's fate, and the mark on her hand seems to know that, taking pride from the shame that it brings her.
"Are you alright?" Dorian had asked in the aftermath.
A question to which she could only reply: "Stroud… is gone".
Dorian had softened at her evident distress and then moved on. Ever the scholar, he'd effortlessly weighed risks and benefits and insisted that they'd come out on top. Done the unthinkable, gone where no living soul had ventured before, and returned more or less intact to tell the tale. Her friend was, understandably, in awe of their experience and writing about it with the diligent attention to detail that only a learned man could muster.
The weight behind her words went unintentionally unheeded; the part of her that screamed I ripped the world open with my hand and left a good man behind to die did not find a voice.
Her choice had been swift, thoughtless in the moment because Hawke was a hero in her city, a true friend to one of Ellana's truest friends, a sister, a protector, the loved one of an elf and former slave. Later, looking down at the eerie fissure in her hand, immense guilt overwhelms Ellana because, no, there really hadn't been a choice. It had to be Stroud, the last good warden, unjustly made to atone for the sins of his brothers when he himself had only done right. It was easier because she knew him without context; Stroud was curving script on a report in Leliana's hand, accomplishments and potential applications summarized succinctly for the Inquisition's deployment. He was the sum total of their brief encounters: aimiable, honourable, staunchly set in his ways. An unfair equation when stacked against everything the world knew about Hawke.
The Champion was, by contrast, a crooked smile and piercing blue eyes, sharp wit and a sudden laugh. A woman who assiduously, and with aid, evaded Ellana's ragtag organization until she deemed it fit to participate – how could words on a page compare to that?
Varric had asked her to save Hawke. That night on the battlements outside of Crestwood, the orange-haired dwarf had chastised the Inquisitor for dallying, and she had promised she would save the Champion if she could.
Ellana sits next to Sera at the tavern, smile on her lips as she tries to be apart from it. The anchor. Bull, on her other side, pushes a tankard her way, and she is all too ready to get smashed on his turpentine. But the anchor lingers, and she cannot dismiss the hints of the feeling - the steady ache that lies just below the surface of her consciousness, almost invisible until her mind, caving, flits back to its existence. When it does, when what she thinks of as 'the marked hand' grasps the tankard firmly, it pulses, not with light, but with a sensation that only she can perceive. As if it knows that it has won. Again. That she cannot dismiss it. That pretending it is not there will never work.
She takes a swig from the tankard and coughs, sputtering as Bull laughs uproariously and slaps her on the back.
"That's the spirit." He tells her, voice thick in that way that tells her he's had too many and plans to keep going. "Nothing gets you through hard times like a real drink."
Cabot, face in his perpetual scowl as he wipes down glasses on the other side of the bar, sniffs disapprovingly, and Ellana isn't sure if it's a response to Bull's volume or to the assertion that the piss in her mug is a real drink.
But as Bull and Sera fall deeper under the pleasant fuzz of a drink downed too quickly, Ellana finds herself standing. Staggering away.
It has been an honour, Inquisitor. His last words, the Orlesian accent and a sadness that she could never unhear. He'd looked her in the eyes as she consigned him to death. Did what she asked even though they'd all watched the memories together, all learned that she was no chosen of the Maker, no herald of Andraste. Just a woodland elf in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Coincidence, not fate, had made her Inquisitor. Stroud died on the command of a woman made leader by a fluke.
She collapses against the outside of the tavern, sinking down. In the shadow of the building, she prays that no one will see her. Men and women mill about, sparring in the open courtyard, laughing, and Ellana closes her eyes so that she cannot see it anymore.
Stroud's face is waiting on the inside of her eyelids and the anchor is laughing. Mocking her, alive in the cleft of her palm and ready to consume her whole. She can almost hear Corypheus whispering in her head: you've stopped my demon army but at what cost?
What is your Inquisition if the lives of those who serve it are meaningless to you?
Ellana buries her hands in her hair and is shocked to realize she is screaming.
The magister god cackles and she wonders if she is losing her mind. The mark in her hand comes to life and everyone in the courtyard has stopped, is watching her as she crouches in what was once darkness, bathed in shimmering green light, her jaw clenched so that she will not scream again.
Leliana is suddenly by her side.
"Come, Inquisitor," she says softly, in an accent that was all too much like Stroud's. "It has been a trying few weeks. You need rest."
The spymaster's hand is insistent at Ellana's elbow, and the Inquisitor will not look up. Lets Leliana lead them it she may because the ability to resist has long since fled the elf. They scutter through the Great Hall, passed Josephine and a group of men in silks and tights. Beneath the head of the dragon they'd slain in Crestwood and the halflings merchant and his enchanter son, a well-meaning lad who whispered "enchantment" softly as they passed.
Then they were through the door and blessedly away from prying eyes. Leliana's fingers are tight on the Inquisitor's elbow and even still the human insists on leading them. Leliana - always action and surety. Confidence in her plan, no matter how gruesome it had to be. Of all of the Inquisition members, the spymaster was the most pragmatic, the one who over and over again dedicated herself to the difficult choices and darker methods that none of the others wished to face.
"The choice would have been easy for you," Ellana mutters to the human woman as they mount the stairs to the Inquisitor's chamber.
"What do you mean, Inquisitor?" Leliana has always been stiff and formal with Ellana. The elf has seen her laugh, with Josie and Cullen, but when it's just the two of them the spymaster is all surface pleasantries or clipped commands. It has worked for them, over these long months, and Ellana never sought to change their relationship.
"The Champion or the warden." They are in Ellana's room and the elf suddenly needs fresh air. Pulls out of the human's hand and out onto the wide balcony. A storm is brewing in the distance, clouds grey and tumultuous over the mountains. "They asked me to choose."
"I read your report." Leliana's reply is even, emotionless and the woman stands with crossed arms behind the Inquisitor. "But you must think me unfeeling indeed if you think your choice would have been easy in my hands."
Leliana's tone is not hurt, simply factual. The wind stirs her red, red hair and Ellana wonders what it must be like to be so full of colour. Pale skin, vibrant hair, blue eyes. Ellana, by comparison, is a palette of earth-tones, browns and greens without contrast.
"Why did they turn to me?" Ellana spins to face Leliana, leans back on her hands against the railing of the balcony. "How could I decide?"
Leliana says nothing for a moment. Shakes her head slowly.
"You are the Inquisitor. Stroud and Hawke both respected that."
"But surely there was a right choice. I made the right choice didn't I? Facts and figures, the alliances each brought, the impact on moral," Ellana gestures with her hands, willing Leliana to understand. The anchor, meanwhile, is dull pain against her hand, sending small flickers of agony up her arm.
"I cannot give you what you need, Ellana." Leliana's face softens in a small way. "I don't know who the better asset is for the Inquisition. Or who was the more logical choice." The human steps forward, raises a hand as if to touch Ellana and then lets it fall.
Ellana's hands fist and she drops the woman's gaze, stares fixedly at the stone beneath their feet.
"All I know is that when a decision needed to be made, you made it."
The elf glances up through her eyelashes. Leliana is standing close, watching her with a guarded expression, as if ready for the Inquisitor to burst into flames or foolish action.
Ellana sighs and turns around. Gazes at the mountains beyond and for once feels no yearning to draw them, to capture their sublimity in charcoal.
"It's hard, isn't it?" Leliana came to stand next to her, letting her hands rest on the balcony.
The Inquisitor cast a sidelong glance at the woman as slow realization seeped into her mind. These were the everyday decisions faced by Leliana. Which assets to sacrifice, which to save. Ellana had blamed the woman once, hated the spymaster for the merciless way she'd interrogated her shortly after her arrival in Haven. But Ellana understood now. It was like the Divine had said. She repeats the words, softly.
"Without fear and pain and failure, we cannot learn. We cannot grow."
Lelianna nods.
"Justinia's words ring true here. Stroud's sacrifice will not be squandered."
"She, uhm." Ellana swallows. She hadn't put this last detail in the reports, but the spymaster deserved to know. "She apologized."
"Hm?"
"She said 'tell Leliana I'm sorry I failed her too.'"
Leliana says nothing but Ellana sees her grip tighten on the railing before them.
"She was quite a woman." Ellana remarks finally, speaking words into the silence because someone had to say something.
"And Stroud was quite a man," Leliana responds immediately. She turns sideways to face the Inquisitor. "We will honour their sacrifices."
"And we must do it quickly." Ellana replies. "Leliana. I fear that Corypheus is driving me mad."
The words are out there and the Inquisitor cannot take them back. Someone had to know - it wasn't enough to rely on Dorian's sleep magics to keep the magister at bay. The mark feels angry at this admission and its presence turns into a searing heat in her hand. Ellana clutches the hand closed and refuses to let the pain onto her face.
"What do you mean?" Leliana's eyes are wide with concern.
"I hear his voice. We are linked by this." She brings the fist up but will not set the mark alight. "He's mocking me every step of the way."
Leliana's hands find the Inquisitor's shoulders.
"You are not mad, Inquisitor." Her blue eyes hold the elf's green ones intensely. "You are connected by some evil magic perhaps, but you are our leader and our saviour. You will not succumb to this."
Ellana swallows. Studies the woman and admires the confidence in the way the weight settles into one of Leliana's hips, the way her armour is polished and her scarlet hair is neatly parted. So together and so confident.
"How are you so sure?"
The spymaster responds with a half-smile that is all confidence.
"You are not the first living legend I have fought alongside. Greatness comes with a price, but in the end it always triumphs."
Of course. While Ellana was just a petty crook in the dank of Kirkwall, Leliana was saving the word alongside Tabris, Hero of Ferelden. Another elf at the center of a myth of epic proportions. Another hero who struggled with dark dreams - the nightmares of wardens - and whispered voices.
Inexplicably, Ellana finds herself laughing.
"There's precedent for all this shit."
Leliana laughs alongside her, and Ellana is momentarily surprised at just how feminine the sound of the other woman's laughter is. It's easy to forget, in the face of her cold justice and quick daggers, that Leliana was once a bard and a gem of the Orlesian court.
"That's right, Inquisitor." Leliana holds her gaze with a fond smile and Ellana reflects that this might be the first truly pleasant conversation they've ever had.
"Thank you, Leliana," She clasps the woman's arm.
"Of course. We can't have you falling apart in the courtyard after all. What would Josie say?"
Ellana knows better than to smart at the comment. The spymaster turns and sashays off the balcony.
"Oh," she calls over her shoulder as she makes to leave. "If you have a moment, go see the Commander. He's stewing in guilt, amongst other things. Could use some of your cheer."
Ellana cocks her head and says nothing as Leliana disappears out the chamber door. She hadn't seen Cullen much in the aftermath of Adamant. He'd stayed with the troops, coordinated care for the wounded, while she and her party had forged on ahead of the slower army.
The elf looks down at the mark on her hand and she can feel its evil will pressing against her skin. She closes the fist tightly again and decides she cannot let it win. She has to be in motion instead of stagnant, doing so that she won't get lost in the oppressive sea of emotions that thinking on the anchor brings. She goes to see the Commander immediately.
Cullen's desk is, as always, run over with papers, and the man himself sits behind the desk, nose in one report with another one clutched in his hand.
He didn't hear Ellana enter and she takes the moment to study him. The Commander looked tired - his hair stood on end, evidence of the frustrated hand that ran through it more times than Ellana could count in a single meeting, and his eyes were red rimmed with sleeplessness. As always, he is breastplate and fur cloak, his sword leaning against the side of desk but within reach should a crisis arise. That was the Commander all over – always alert, always ready. She smiles softly and wonders how the Inquisition got so lucky – not just in Cullen, whose leadership on the field of battle was thoroughly proven after Adamant, but also in Leliana for knowing what questions to ask when, and in Josephine for doing what the rest of them could not.
Cullen glances up and copper eyes widen at the sight of her.
"Inquisitor." He hastily makes to stand, sends scroll tubes skittering over his desk, but she waves him back into his seat. The elf drags a stool over and sits across from him, lets her eyes dance over the reports and orders that make up his day. No one wrote songs about all the paper work the Inquisition processed. No bard recited tales of the knee-high piles of requisition orders Ellana filled, the training schedules the Commander devised, the letters asking one last time for funds that Josephine so carefully worded. Unsung acts of heroism that were just as vital as the demon-fighting, the rift-closing.
"Inquisitor." Cullen says again, clearing his throat. "I was about to seek you out."
She looks up at him then and cocks her head to the left. But Cullen continues to stare, pale and uncertain in the light that filters through that still-unfixed hole in his ceiling, and Ellana realizes that maybe her silence discomforts him. That even after all her years of living amongst humans, she forgets that they need sound, the reaffirmation of their own voices. So different from how her father had trained her - in their prime in Kirkwall, Ellana and her father could have an entire silent conversation over the head of a prospective buyer. Decide whether to knife the customer in the ribs for knowing too much or to up the ante by a dozen royals. Fates and fortunes determined through glances and silent gestures.
"Leliana said you were…" Ellana pauses, purses her lips as she remembers the exact phrase, "stewing in guilt? Maker knows why."
She puts on a small smile but Cullen simply looks confused. Inwardly, the elf sighs - why was he always so on edge around her?
"What?" Cullen's eyes narrow and the Inquisitor can't tell if it's annoyance or suspicion but then he's moved on. "That doesn't matter now. This report..."
The Commander stretches out a gauntleted hand to pass the document and then thinks better of it, pulling it away from Ellana's reaching fingers.
"Cullen?" the elf is confused.
"It's…" He stammers in return. "It's from your Keeper. Er. The Keeper of clan Lavellan that is. "
Ellana swallows hard as guilt rides over her in waves. Of course. When she'd left for Adamant things in Wycome were only worsening. With the help of Leliana's spies they'd uncovered that her Clan was under attack from the Duke Antoine himself - his troops, in disguise, brought violence to clan Lavellan in an effort to displace blame for the Duke's own crimes. Her people made to suffer once because Antoine's greed pushed the limits of what was safe.
Red lyrium was behind the plague in Wycome – they'd learned that just before the Inquisition was set to depart for Adamant. Red lyrium of all things, but surely Elhan had understood that the evil in Wycome and the evil of Corypheus were one and the same?
How could she have forgotten? Her stomach twists in a sick knot and she knows she needs to leave, to be gone and on the road to Wycome.
Ellana stands suddenly and reaches over, snatching the missive from Cullen's hand and ignoring the look of alarm that spreads across his face.
Her eyes scan quickly and Keeper Deshanna's words, though the hand that guides the cursive is smooth and confident, bespeak muted worries.
"Duke Antoine is dead…" Ellana's voice holds wonder. Her clan had not been seriously harmed.
"Leliana's spies sewed secrets in the right places." Cullen stands too, comes around the desk and begins to strap on his sword. His hands need to be busy, Ellana reflects distantly. Need to be doing something now that she'd taken the letter from him. A man of action, through and through.
"The truth of the red lyrium got out and the people rioted," he explains. A dark look passes over his face as his brow wrinkles. "I have seen it before. The Duke was killed in the riots, and though some recognize the truth of the matter, I fear your people are still in danger of taking the blame."
"My Clan is trapped within the city..." Her fists tighten and the paper begins to crumble.
"I need to go Cullen." She looks up and meets his steely golden gaze. Now that he's standing, she's reminded of just how tall he is. His face is impassive as he studies her. "I need to be in Wycome."
"Josephine has friends and diplomats in the city. Perhaps they can convince the Wycome council to hear reason." His tone is tentative and she cannot understand why he of all people is saying these words. He was their Commander, the one who always spoke of fortifying the position, showing strength of arms instead of parlayed words.
The Inquisitor is shaking her head before her words have even formed.
"No. The time for cloak and dagger tactics and political maneuvering is over." She reaches out, her slim fingers clasping his arm. "Cullen. I need a detachment of your best. No one injured from Adamant."
The Commander meets her gaze and takes a long breath in through his nose. They are close – she can feel the warmth of him – and she has to lift her chin to continue to hold his gaze. She will not look away. Can't he see how badly she needs this? He studies her for a long moment and he can tell that she does not want to let her go.
Finally, he sighs.
"I know that expression, Inquisitor. You will go with or without my troops." He says, bringing a hand to rest on top of hers, on his arm. "You may have a detachment. Enough to scare sense into those damned merchants."
The metal of his gauntlets is cold on the top of her hand, but she squeezes his arm in thanks all the same.
"Thank you, Commander." She pauses and then decides to push for it. "Could I also have Rylen? I want someone capable at the helm."
He has not released her and she is reminded of just how close they are standing when his face breaks out into an adorable half smile.
"Inquisitor. These are the people that raised you. Without them and their sense of morality, we would have no leader for our cause."
Ellana is anxious energy. She appreciates his words but wishes he would just get to the point. She begins to pull back but his metal hand remains on top of hers, holding her close.
"You cannot have Rylen."
She opens her mouth to object.
"Instead, you will have me."
Her jaw opens, an unfamiliar expression of surprise.
Cullen laughs and drops her hand.
"I will select the detachment and we will be ready to march within the hour. You had best suit up."
Ellana nods, determined, and leaps into motion. She is nearly out the door before she remembers. She turns and her expression is, for once, unguarded. The gratitude nearly chokes her. They've been back only two days and yet he's ready to march for her.
"Thank you, Cullen."
Cullen pauses, his hands frozen in the act of neatly stacking his papers. He looks up and the sunlight turns his pale hair into gold. He meets her eyes and his voice is serious when he replies.
"You are the Inquisitor." He shifts to face her fully. "It is an honour."
Ellana hesitates, unsure what to say in the face of his gravitas. Instead, she opts for the elven model of wordless communication. She nods, turns and is gone.
She is unaware of Cullen's gaze as it follows her across the causeway.