Chapter 7: Of Death and Life
The Exalted Plains had been a bloody affair. Between the rising dead and the arrogance of cocky Orlesians the Bainsidhe had had enough violence to momentarily drown the pain of her withdrawal. It was ironic to her that the whole affair seemed watched over by the towering effigy of elven supremacy.
A coincidence she'd found helpful in deciding how to handle the insult delivered by a commander whose fort she'd just saved. "Perhaps you should tell me the history of the Dales," Marshall Proulx had sneered. She pondered if his ghost would remember his last insult as she perused the blood soaked tongue her assassin had delivered two days later.
She was clearly not the only one pondering the irony of the situation as Solas glowered at the towering Fen Harel that seemed to be staring back at him. When he'd noticed her considering gaze, he'd nodded in understanding. As always between them, words without words.
And perhaps blood for the slights dealt their people was on his mind as well as they finally came across the spirit he desired so badly to rescue. Rescue it they had, but too late and his rage built until it was a thing of beauty that fired her blood. Her own latent rage rising to match his.
When he turned to her for permission to kill the ones responsible, she'd been surprised. That such rage still had self control spoke to his…power? And power indeed she witnessed as with a gesture he destroyed an entire group of mages. Mages that had the power to summon a spirit and twist it to their will.
As he strode away, the layered words he'd left behind puzzled her. Not for the words themselves, those she understood. It was the sense of loss that inexplicably burned in the empty space he'd left behind that confused her.
Once back at Skyhold, though she'd witnessed his return, the confusion in her heart disturbed her. Isolation, that waswhat was needed so she could think through what her heart was telling her so she fled to the highest place in the keep. The cry of the ravens clashed with the pain of withdrawal rising now that she wasn't in a constant fight for her life.
Again she fled, but this time to the silence of the lowest place in the keep. But the silence wasn't soothing. Instead it breathed to her of madness and death. "Lyrium" it sang in the water that cascaded beyond the crumbling cells. "Come embrace the peace of death," the pain whispered as the edge of the precipice and so again she fled.
Varric, he would help. His humor could distract her. For a time it helped as he pulled her into her first game of Wicked Grace. The teasing he subjected her to...at first she'd felt her anger rising against him, but then the gentleness of his gaze and the touch of his hand as she tensed calmed it. He cared about her, the gaze said without words. He cared and wouldn't allow her to suffer.
But he couldn't stop it. Not without red lyrium and that was something she hadn't been able to bring herself to force from him just yet. Soon...if it became too hard for her to suffer. Then she'd have him tortured for the location.
But as her "friend" smiled into her red rimmed eyes, she decided again...not yet.
She fled the vision of Varric's agony her path taking her again through the rotunda.
He was there.
Her flight was interrupted as he stepped before the doorway to stop her.
"I would speak with you," he said, but again the unspoken bore more weight. "I 'need' to speak to you," the words whispered beneath the words. A decision had been made and the discomfort he clearly had with it set her on her guard. If she must kill him (or he her, the death of the mages still clear in her memory), it would be outside of prying eyes and ears and so she took him to her quarters.
Questioning? She had not expected that and it was clear his questions expected no true answer. Instead, the words under the words spoke to her of desire...and of something else, but what she couldn't read clearly.
Ah desire. This time when he kissed her the dance was more even. She could feel in the hard length pressed by his hips against her that his hunger was as real as hers was.
The kiss heated her blood, truly, but she'd had experience separating the manipulations of lust and the vagaries of love. Moving against him in a way to stoke the fire that clearly heated his man's blood, the room began to fade around her. A change her own need hid from her at first. As he pulled away, though, his clear lust blurred with something else. Magic? But he'd cast no spells?
It wasn't until he'd abruptly left and she'd fled to the sanctuary of the lost library that she realized the lyrium withdrawal had lessened to dull roar. Had he done that? If so, how? And more importantly, why?
It required more time, more proximity to really understand his full intention. And she had no doubt whatsoever that his intentions were dangerous.