Chapter One: The Four of Coins
Thump.
Thump.
The sound was intensely satisfying. Torrin wheeled her arm back, and with all the fluidity and timing of a striking snake, flicked her wrist to send another one of her knives forward to embed itself within the trunk.
Thump.
She sighed, reaching for another knife, only to realize they were all poking out of the tree. She straightened, cracking her neck side to side in an attempt to relieve her stiff shoulders. Her mind was blissfully empty- she couldn't be more glad of it. Ever since the damn explosion that had careened her into a veritable lion's den, she hadn't had a moment of peace. Either due to the shems around her, or due to her racing thoughts, sleep had been turning into a coquettish stranger.
She thought then of the sweet-tempered elven messenger, entering the hut where Torrin lay carrying her bundle of herbs ever so carefully; her shock as she realized Torrin had been awake. How scared and nervous she was. One of her own people- scared by her. Torrin listened to her feet as they crunched softly in the snow. She was pleased at how soft the sound had became after shedding those ridiculous boots she had worn as a spy.
The sound stopped as she reached the tree. She shook her head as she pulled the first knife free.
"Hahren."
Torrin snorted. "Our similarities end at our pointed ears."
That particular brand of nug-headed judgement was the one thing that never failed to make her skin crawl in revulsion. It was something that Torrin found the Dalish to suffer from on more than one occasion, but then she found that city elves suffered just as strongly. The same could probably be said for other people, if she was being honest. But both the Dalish and the City elves generally stewed deep in the swamps of their own prejudices against each other; the word 'sethlin' itself was proof enough. And Solas was steeped in that very same prejudice, apparently. She had expected him to be different than all that. And yet, he remained prejudiced against the Dalish for their being prejudiced. The hypocrisy of it made her lip curl. Hahren, indeed.
She missed Keeper Deshanna and all her calm and level kindness. As far as could be said of the Dalish, Deshanna was a rarity. Not only did she find the more traditional Dalish practices pertaining to 'too many' mages distasteful, but she was also somehow more...progressive, more forward-thinking; the words sethlin and flat-ear were not to be spoken amongst Deshanna's clan. She would go so far as to actively punish those who ever dared. Torrin smiled wistfully, thumbing a knife blade as she remembered the first time Ryarthan had called her 'flat-ear' in Deshanna's presence. He had been acting the typical little boy; seeking to make little girls cry, but Deshanna's resulting glare could have melted one to the earth beneath their feet. Torrin had been glad she was not the one at the other end of that glare. Ryarthan was cowed into stunned silence after Deshanna pulled him away by the tip of his ear, his embarrassment so great that he had not complained when Deshanna had been sure to give him the more undignified chores for the next month. It turned out that little boys didn't like cleaning up Halla shit from around the camp and washing the clan's underthings. Deshanna (in all her humor) would even make him do all the washing if he 'missed a stain.' Ryarthan had found the whole affair to be the stuff of nightmares.
So as far as her Keeper was concerned, they were all Elvhen. The geography to which one happened to be born in didn't matter. Blood ran thicker than that and blood was the only thing left that could connect The People. Torrin sank into the ground at the base of the trunk and looked into the gray-green sky. For one ludicrous, brief moment, the sickly sky looked hauntingly beautiful even as it taunted her.
She couldn't stop questioning her decision to stay, likely because of the fear it was based on. After what had happened at the Temple, The Seeker had made it clear that Torrin was free to leave and nothing would have made her happier than to disappear out of that Chantry room that very moment. But it was the Nightingale's words- the threat laced within them that had given Torrin pause. It had made her fear.
"Here, we can give you protection. We cannot guarantee the same if you leave us," said the Spymaster, eyes narrowed and lips curled into a poor attempt at a genuine smile. Those words had chilled Torrin's bones more than the cold mountain air of Haven ever could. They had frozen her in place enough to stay with these people for the time being. Normally, Torrin would have laughed at any dumb shem that attempted to frighten her into submission, but...Torrin knew within her heart that if the Nightingale didn't want her to get away from Haven, she wouldn't, one way or another.
So here she was, decidedly and blessedly alive but alone. Alone with a title that made her own blood draw back from her.
That was what had made her reach out to Solas, she supposed, to seek his friendship, his kinship. He had never looked at her the way the others did: never like she was the answer to all his problems or like she was something more, something divine and untouchable. It had been her mistake that she took that fact to mean he saw her as his equal. That he didn't see her only for her damn title. It had been a moment of miscalculated, naive hope.
No. He saw her for her title and he would not see the person behind it. He saw only a Dalish elf hiding there, 'Torrin' the person didn't exist for him anymore than she did for the others. He dismissed her on account of her Dalish-ness; she was beneath him. And that fact continued to sting at her.
The pedestal she was forced to perch on was more precarious than she could likely handle. Was that how everyone was to be then now that she had this mark? Would she always be either above or below, never on equal ground? Never equal? She stared at the gaping green, hissing hole in her palm and scowled, muttering a curse. /p
She missed Deshanna.
"Uh, this a bad time?"
Torrin's neck snapped up to the direction of the intrusion. Varric stood about six feet away, looking at her with a wide-eyed and slightly concerned looking expression. The concern softened her own expression before she noticed the tension in his shoulders; she followed his eyes as they glanced quickly at the knife marks in the tree behind her back. When he looked to her face again, he was frowning. She was no longer sure if it was out of concern or not.
He was waiting for her to respond. Torrin shrugged her shoulders, not moving to get up from her solid ground.
"No," she said. "What's going on?"
"Aside from the demons and the hole in the sky?" he said. "Nothing too exciting." When she didn't laugh, or even crack the stone that her face had become, Varric cleared his throat. "I, uh, thought that maybe I should be the one to get you."
"Get me," she repeated, not understanding what he wanted.
Varric sighed and rubbed the back of his neck for a moment, looking at the ground. "Seeker and Nightingale went looking for you. They have some plan they want to go over to get to the Hinterlands- some Chantry thing, but well, they didn't know where you went. I happened to see you walk off in this direction and volunteered to find you."
Torrin pulled her face into a frown, nose folding into her eyebrows. "They need me to plan?" she asked.
Varric blinked a few times before he answered, "Yeah, pretty sure they wanted you there."
Torrin figured that was probably due to her being their 'Herald' but..."And you specifically wanted to fetch me. Why?" She wasn't overly suspicious- just curious. As much as he tried to hide it, Torrin could tell that after the temple, Varric was filled with the same reverence the others were, albeit to a lesser degree. Varric looked all the world like he was lost from her question. Torrin couldn't fathom the emotions he was feeling. He barely knew her- she hadn't upset him had she?
He held his hands up, palms out before his next words. "Look, I've written my share of hero stories," he said. "I know that it never really goes all that great for the heroes. I wanted...I wanted to let you know you have a friend. If you need it. I'm not good at this shit." He lowered his arms and gave her a small, unsteady grin. "You're not alone here. Don't let the hero stuff go to your head. Focus on the positives. Like the fact that you're still breathing- a miracle considering the hole in the damn sky. That you apparently fell out of."
Torrin felt warmth flood through her veins until it pooled in her face. She spent a few of her heartbeats trying to keep her eyes from widening with her surprise before she failed miserably. He had been concerned after all, genuinely so. She hadn't expected that to have been his reason; she hadn't thought he saw her as an...as an equal. For a long time, she couldn't offer him a response.
Varric chuckled. "You look like a nug that stumbled into a hungry dwarf," he said. "Aside from the blush, but all of this makes the whole shadowy-stabby thing that you do seem somewhat less intimidating."
She barked out a short laugh. "My reputation better not go to shit after this," she said giving him a glare empty of real anger, even though her next words dripped sarcasm, "Don't want to ruin their whole 'Herald' thing they have going."
"Oh, I don't think you need to work too hard at keeping that image alive," he mused before shaking his head. He grew more somber after that, frowning again. He exhaled. "You...you alright? You've gone from most wanted criminal in Thedas, to joining the armies of the faithful...most people would have spread that out over more than one day."
"Bit of whiplash," she said. "But I'm alive, right?"
"Looks that way to me," Varric said. "But...I've been talking too much. We should probably get going. Knowing the Seeker, she's probably getting a bit..."
"Frothing with rage?" Torrin offered.
"Nah," Varric answered. "That's too much emotion for her- disgruntled and unamused, maybe. But she likes to stab things when she's 'unamused', so..." Varric laughed and looked pointedly at the holes behind Torrin's head. "Seems like you two have something in common."
Torrin lithely stood, unfolding her legs slowly and brushing the backs of her legs with her hand as she went. She paused for a moment to re-tuck her braid behind her ear, she didn't feel right when it was out of place. She looked at Varric. "The horror," she said, giggling. Creators, it felt good to finally laugh. At the sound of her laughter, Varric's face broke into the largest grin she had ever seen him have, the corners of his eyes wrinkling with shared warmth. Torrin thought she could get used to that warmth, he was like the sun.
"I swear on the Creators, I won't let her stab you Varric," Torrin said jokingly as they began their slow walk back to Haven.
"Oh, don't fight her over little ol' me," he said. "Actually, no, do that. I'd pay good money to see it."
Torrin laughed again. They spent the rest of the too short walk talking of who else they would like to see fight each other. Torrin noticed that the hole in her hand felt a hell of a lot smaller as they talked. She finally had some breathing room; the pedestal came a little closer back to the dirt she wanted desperately to stand on again.
Author Note: So, I'm continuing with it! Yay! I sort of figured out that I need a break from the other story (I have no idea where I'm going with it) so...here's this!
I've decided that the chapter titles are going to be based on the tarot card equivalents (also, the line about Varric being like the Sun was inspired by the fact that one of his Tarot cards is The Sun). So, this chapter is called the Four of Coins after a Dalish Inquisitor's tarot equivalent. The more you know :)
My goal for this chapter was to show that Solas and Torrin both have similar thoughts on the other, for slightly similar reasons. They're kind of mirroring each other, is my point.
As for Torrin's background, I'm going to go more into that. I have this whole cool back story that I'm really excited to reveal, but I want to reveal it slowly and develop it as much as possible.
Sorry if Varric didn't seem too happy-go-lucky at the start. I'm trying to show that the rest of the Inquisition doesn't know what to make of her quite yet (this is starting right after getting back from the Temple of Sacred Ashes) and this includes Varric. He sees a slightly prickly and intimidating Dalish and he's trying to figure her out.
Anyway, I hope you like it. I know it might not be that exciting, but there has to be some degree of set-up before stories start really moving. I'm hoping my writing is good enough to keep you all interested.
Much love!