A Taste of Home

Iralen slowly climbed the stairs toward her quarters, making use of the sun shining beyond the empty window to read a letter, written in a fine hand and lightly scented, signed by Josephine:

The issue of Thom Rainier has been settled, but his deception has had far-reaching consequences. Had we not used the Grey Warden treaties, we might not have found ourselves in so awkward a position. As it is, I receive daily messages from all quarters, demanding we make reparations. We must do something.

That wasn't the entirety of the problem, however. As her advisors so often did, Cullen had scribbled a note of his own at the bottom of Josephine's hot-pressed letterhead. His impatience with the ambassador showed clearly in every slash of his quill.

I'm sorry, did we embarrass a duchess at a soiree by stepping on her gown, or was the sky torn open and Haven beset by an ancient darkspawn magister? We needed the gold. We needed the men. You would have persuaded someone to part with them, with or without the treaties. We are not making reparations for doing what we had to do. What no one else could have done.

Don't forget, the Wardens were exiled from Southern Thedas, by the power of the Inquisition. We've seized their holdings. Anything owed them is now owed us.

If Iralen had not stopped by the war room to check on Leliana's current mission and picked up this letter, Josephine might have penned a politely snarky response, something along the lines of their duty to keep the Inquisition viable after Corypheus's defeat. A not-so-gentle chiding to remind the commander that they would attract more flies with honey than with vinegar, perhaps.

Iralen smirked humorlessly to herself. Human platitudes. She could imagine Sera's unhinged giggling. What do you want flies for? Pfft. Better luck with a leaking privy. Arrow, whoosh, done!

For the most part, Iralen agreed with Josephine during their war council meetings. Cullen tended to dismiss petitions from the nobility as time-wasting. "Ridiculous." That was the word he liked to use. Josephine, however, sought and found the middle ground in so many cases. She petted. She flattered. She bribed. She traded favors. She danced circles around the opposition with a winsome smile. If she needed to push the Inquisition's influence, she managed to do it by convincing the other party that the Inquisition was servile.

They were in fact nothing of the kind. That was where Leliana came in, but Iralen's spymaster had so far refused to comment on this particular issue.

The air blowing through the broken window was frightfully cold. As much as Iralen had discovered she liked being a woman as powerful as the Inquisitor, she missed being out there in the wilderness, answering to no one but her Keeper, in charge of no one but herself. If the explosion at the Conclave not happened, she would have quietly returned home, another invisible knife-ear passing from human memory. She raised her face to the wind, hoping that the chill would ease her headache, but all it did was whistle around her ears and numb her cheeks. Admitting defeat, she hurried around the last turn and shouldered her way through the door to her private staircase.

Once she reached her spacious quarters, where someone always kept a fire burning for her, Iralen allowed some of the Inquisitor to fall from her posture. She collapsed on her divan, and then she bent to remove her calf boots. She threw them, one after the other, in the direction of her wardrobe and listened with satisfaction to the clump, clump of them hitting the wall. She would rather not wear them, but when the humans worked so hard to provide their Herald with every worldly comfort, the Herald could hardly refuse. Besides, she was certain Sera's approval would plummet if she traipsed around without shoes like an elfy-elf and bam! Earwigs in Her Gracious Ladybits' sheets.

Sadly, not even bare feet helped Iralen's mood. The rug was too soft. Too uniform. Too far from the moist earth. She wearily scrubbed her hands over her forehead and temples. Blindly, she traced the symbol tattooed there, willing some of Mythal's wisdom to seep through her skin. She had not planned to exile the Grey Wardens. Especially after she forced Stroud to leave Hawke behind in the Fade, so that Stroud could help the Wardens recover. Then she'd realized they could not afford to ignore the flaw in the Warden mages which Corypheus had exploited. The look on Stroud's face when she had made her decree, banishing him and his entire order to the Anderfels! It would haunt her for years, she was sure.

As far as Josephine's concerns about the misused Warden treaties went, Iralen struggled with what to decide, which advisor to assign to the problem. It wasn't so much that she agreed with Cullen over Josephine. It was that she wasn't sure whether the Inquisition should survive after it dealt with the Elder One.

But that was a thought she kept strictly to herself. She was the Inquisitor. Her doubt of her own institution's right to exist was a treason that overshadowed Black – or rather, Rainier's, ghastly lies.

Then there was Rainier himself. He was furious with her for having him returned to Skyhold from Val Royeaux. For using the Inquisition's influence to protect a criminal.

Well, let him be angry. She was the Inquisitor! Abruptly, Iralen marched to her desk. She wouldn't allow herself to regret what she had done for a man she considered a friend. A man who would always be Warden Blackwall to her. A good man. She wrote out her orders for Cullen in her flowing Dalish script – The treaties are ours. We move forward, not back. – and then folded the letter into thirds. She tossed it aside, not wanting to look at it anymore.

It came to rest against a package that had not been there earlier. The package was wrapped in a royal oak leaf and tied with a dragon whisker vine. A wild rose bloom lay atop it, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. The whole ensemble looked so out of place there on her polished desk amid her red leather blotter, marble quill and ink stand, a stack of pristine books, a stolen hip pouch and nicked dagger, a robust Ferelden tea service, and a porcelain halla statuette, its antlers and hooves gilded in the Orlesian style. There was only one person who would do something so . . . elfy.

Iralen sank into her chair. She reached for the rose. Its delicate, sweet scent reminded her of home. Wild roses just like this one grew in clusters by the river. In an instant, she was transported there, seven years old, hiding in the bushes while the other women washed laundry. Twelve years old, perched in a tree, holding her breath and a nocked arrow while a great bear ambled by below. Eighteen, gritting her teeth through the blood-writing, lest any sound escape her and cause Keeper Deshanna to halt the ritual and shame Iralen in the eyes of her clan.

All other cares forgotten, Iralen pulled the package closer, undid the vine, and unfolded the leaf, large as a dinner plate when laid flat. Inside, plump blackberries lay around a tiny earthenware crock, its cork sealed with maroon wax.

Delighted, she hunted up a letter opener and popped open the crock, which held a dollop of honey. She dipped a berry in its golden goodness. Blackberries had always been her weakness. How many summers had she snuck back into camp, her gathering-basket empty, her mouth and hands stained deep purple? How many times had she been punished for eating the harvest, only to be sent out to do it again the very next day?

She ate another berry, giddy. Solas must have found these on the Plains, and picked them for her. An apology, maybe, for leaving the way he had? A thank-you gift for trying to help his friend? He couldn't have known blackberries were her favorite.

He couldn't possibly have known, and yet . . .

She licked the last of the honey from her fingers, feeling, for the moment, like a young elf woman. Not like the Inquisitor at all.

Still, there was no escaping reality for long. She gathered up leaf and vine and threw them on the fire. If only there was some way she could return his kindness. Some way that she could help ease the sadness that hovered constantly around him like an agitated Cole.

She plucked the rose off the desktop, turning it in her fingers so that she could admire the five white petals, the pink heart. Then she opened one of her books, placed the bloom between the pages, and closed the book. A secret. A promise. She put the book in a drawer, resolving to ask him more about his journeys through the Fade the next time she saw him. Perhaps, if he talked about the ancient battlefields and the ruins he had explored, it would give him a taste of home, too.

A/N: Dragon Age: Inquisition Omake Gekijō Presents: "A Taste of Home."

This story went through so many changes in between idea and final draft!

I originally wanted to write something funny. My notes told me that Iralen is an elfy elf, but just not in the way Sera thinks. I imagined hijinks galore. That's why Sera seems to be so much on Iralen's mind. The title was "Favorite Things."

Once I started writing, however, Blackwall snuck in, and the mood decidedly cooled. I'm not very good at writing humor after all. I toyed with the idea of homesickness. Do the elves have a term for that? I wanted to show how much Iralen belongs to life in the forest, away from human trappings like stone castles and servants. She does "Inquisitor" so well it's hard to remember she came from a very different background.

Then I realized that I was reaching too far, trying to fit in too much. I decided to focus on one thing. Her very favorite thing. Blackberries. I feel like Solas would do something small like this, where no one would ever see it but her.

The final piece has to do with the fact that sometimes, I just don't know who to send on war table operations!

Disclaimer: These oneshots don't happen in any kind of chronological order. They're written as the ideas come to me.

Reviews are lovely! Won't you leave one, please? My everlasting thanks go to Blackpantherlilies and The Night Whisperer for their reviews of "Little Brother!"

Ever yours,

Anne