All Fall Down
BY: SurreptitiousFox245
Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or Elder Scrolls. All rights go to their respective peoples.
Quick Author's Note: I'm so sorry this took so long. It's been since November. I have no excuse. I joined my school's Model Arab League over spring semester and was crazy busy with that (which my school counts as a class, believe it or not) as well as five other classes. I got it done though.
I know some of you asked for a conversation between Lys and Solas, and I attempted to deliver. It sucks. I'm sorry. That conversation is what gave me the most trouble with this freaking chapter and most of what took me so long to get it done.
Also, really quickly before we jump in because I've gotten a few flames about it, is the 2nd person point of view too distracting? Is my warning in the summary not clear enough (I know it's sort of rushed-I ran out of characters)? Just out of curiosity. I have an easy time reading/writing in 2nd person (more than with third or first, actually, at least for writing) and I'm just wondering if it's really that difficult/distracting to read for you guys.
Anyway, enjoy!
Chapter 14
"What I've felt.
What I've known.
Never shined through in what I've shown.
Never free.
Never me.
So I dub thee 'Unforgiven'."
-Metallica, "Unforgiven"
~Thedas – 9:41 Dragon~
The memory of the last time you'd had a full night's sleep eluded you now that you took a moment to think about it. Brisk night air rattled the edges of the cheap canvas tent you'd purchased from the merchant at the Crossroads, chilling you through even your three layers of blanket. It wasn't the rustling of your poorly-tacked shelter, the endless crackle-pop from the fire, or even Sera's snoring three tents over that was keeping you awake, though. Rather, nightmares were the culprit. You couldn't remember the last time you'd not had one. It had to have been before Nirn fell. Probably earlier, actually. In those weeks leading up to the end, no one had gotten much sleep for preference of running camp-to-camp, shelter-to-shelter just trying to keep alive long enough to win. And even then, despite all the effort poured into the endeavor, it still hadn't been enough. Nirn still fell. You still failed. They still died.
Sighing, you heaved yourself up from how you'd been laying on your back, sick of trying to sleep when you knew full well that you wouldn't be able to. It never seemed to matter what you did or what precautions you tried to take, you always dreamed, always relived. You reached up to scrub a hand across your mask, only to have your glove meet flesh instead.
Always dream and throw the mask off while I'm at it, you amended with a bit of grudging amusement playing on the corner of your mouth. Locating the offending piece of ironbark haphazardly flung into the dirt next to your bedroll, you picked it up and cradled it in your hands. The frayed strap around the back had finally broken away like you'd been expecting it to any day now. It was a quick enough fix and most definitely not the first time you'd had to make it, but it was still annoying. Grumbling a profanity under your breath, you dragged your pack closer and began rummaging around for the spare you'd bought but never gotten around to attaching.
Your hand kept bumping into various knick-knacks, and you had to wonder how in the Void you'd collected so much junk. A roll of parchment was shoved aside, followed by three empty ink bottles, some loose coppers, a sprig of elfroot you couldn't for the life of you recall picking, twine, a half-empty water skin, two vials of invisibility potion, a silverite brooch—
Wait.
Almost of its own accord, the hand that was rooting for the strap curled traitorously around the little pin and pulled it from its leather confines. When your fingers slithered away, you were met with a cracked amethyst and metal dull from the lack of light in your tent. It was as mockingly useless as the day Flemeth had given it to you on Sundermount, the flaw being the only thing to make it remarkable. There weren't even markings etched into its surface. There was just nothing. It was so unassuming, it was suspicious—and no, you didn't quite understand how that worked, either.
In your palm, it seemed heavier than you knew it was. But that could have easily been the implications behind the trinket rather than any physical bearing. Some mythological woman appearing out of nowhere, saying a few cryptic slurs, tossing something most would have considered trash at you, and then shape-shifting and disappearing not minutes before a breach into the Fade split open the sky leagues away probably did that, you supposed. Timing was everything—or so Undilar liked to remind you when you were a child. Flemeth's had been almost too perfect.
You brought the brooch up to your cowl. Before you even realized what you were doing, the old one made of serpentstone was tucked back in your pack with all of your other junk and Flemeth's had replaced it in keeping the ends together and fastened to the front of your tunic. It felt right somehow, and that scared you. Asha'bellanar hadn't asked you to wear it, just to keep it. You shouldn't have done even that. She was a mythological figure, but she wasn't your mythological figure. You blamed the squabble of activity in Haven on distracting you from tossing the damn thing into a lake or something. Wearing the accursed frivolity was nowhere in the job description, and as far as you were concerned, what was there happened to be more of an overlarge clause you really didn't have to listen to.
Despite your attempts to convince yourself of the contrary, the pin remained steadfastly clipped to your cowl as you victoriously yanked the replacement strap free from where it had tangled itself up in old, inked parchment rolls and moldy treats you kept for Beaker that you'd forgotten had been in your bag. You resolved to toss the crackers into the fire first chance you got with a wrinkled nose as you set about securing the length of fabric to the wood. They smelled something awful.
It was only around fifteen minutes, but in the time it took for you to have your mask reaffixed to your face and covered by your cowl, Solas had come and gone in quietly waking Alan for last watch. Your camp was situated just a short walk from the Crossroads and shy of the road, lifted up on a hill. Despite its relative seclusion, Rifts and bandits still liked to crop up on occasion. A watch schedule had been an unspoken agreement between the four of you from the get-go. You could hear the Herald shifting cooking utensils and food around, no doubt trying to get some things laid around to make breakfast easier, and the thought of sustenance made you remember the forgotten bird treats in desperate need of disposal. After some debate, your hand reached for the canvas flap in front of you.
"Solas mentioned he thought you were up. It's not even close to dawn yet," Alan commented, surprised when you finally decided to crawl out of your tent with your satchel slung over your shoulder. He was tossing something up in the air and catching it, the sound making you think it was probably an apple. The pans he'd been digging through were shoved off to the side, abandoned.
Shrugging, you plopped down next to the warrior on the large tree stump he was using as a stool. "Couldn't sleep." You dropped your bag and began rummaging through it again for the crackers.
"Are you still upset with me about the mages?"
"What?" You furrowed your brows as you paused in your rooting, quickly shaking your head at the sudden question. "No. I'm not upset. I never was. I just think you're being an idiot about it is all."
Alan scoffed. "You could have fooled me with how you were back at Haven."
You squeezed your eyes shut and tilted your head back with a sigh. "I'm not discussing this with you right now."
"Fine then," sniffed the human. "Want to discuss how you 'can't sleep'?"
"Wait, you think my insomnia is related to the fact that you made a decision I don't agree with?"
"It does seem a little coincidental."
You shot him the dirtiest glare you could possibly manage, hands still stuffed in your leather bag but frozen in place. "Oh, get over yourself! I'm not going to lose sleep over the fact that you seem Void-bent on making an ass of the Inquisition." While this seemed to anger him, the Trevelyan did an admirable job of reigning in his frustration.
Blowing a sigh through his nose, he asked, "Then why are you awake? We can't afford to be a man down because you're too tired to function."
"You won't," you snapped, yanking the handful of molded crackers out of your pack with more force than was necessary. "My reasons are my own, Herald. I won't let a few nightmares make me a liability." Treats were tossed into the fire harshly. Alan didn't seem to notice or care, but he was blissfully silent, so you took what you could get. Sometimes, you wanted to throttle the boy…
"You've been having nightmares?" You froze. How did he…? Blushing a violent orange at your own carelessness, you bit down on your loose tongue as if the motion would take back the words you'd blurted out in anger.
Stiffly (and with a very sore tongue), you replied, "Yes. It's nothing new. Don't concern yourself over it."
"Too late," Alan fired back. "How long has this been going on?"
Hesitation made you pause, but you knew Alan wouldn't leave well enough alone without some sort of truthful answer. "Years." Those particular ones about the war had been recurring for eleven, anyway. The Imperial ambush that had indirectly brought you to Skyrim had spawned several before that, and you'd always been a fitful sleeper regardless since you left Kvatch. Living in the wilderness tended to do that to a person.
"What are they about?" inquired the man. Red eyes, dissolving stone, golden sneers, decayed bone, you had to shake the flashes out of your mind. Alan's curiosity was innocent. You knew this, but you still tensed up and only just resisted the urge to hit him and run. He couldn't know about Nirn. No one could know about Nirn. Mages in Thedas could be crazy enough as it was. If one of them found out how Tamriel had been torn to shreds…or, worse yet, about the Daedra…
A shaky inhale preceded your response. "An incident that happened what feels like a lifetime ago. I don't want to speak of it. Please." The last bit was added as an afterthought, not so much sincere as it was desperate. He simply couldn't pry. He couldn't.
"If…if you ever want to talk…," he offered feebly, having intended to push the issue but deciding to drop it last minute. The sentiment was still appreciated. "Adan could probably fix something to help, too, if you wanted to ask him about it." For some reason, you couldn't imagine the childish Herald of Andraste or the surly alchemist doing much to listen to your problems even if you deigned to inform them of them. Even less so could you picture any concoction of Adan's actually helping make the nightmares stop.
You stood and shouldered your pack again. "Thank you, but I'll be okay. I'm going to take a walk." You got maybe ten steps towards the path to the road when you heard Alan make a hum of curiosity and scrape something up from the dirt. "Lys?" Swiveling, you turned your mask to him.
"What's this?" The warrior held something out to you. "I can't read what it says." As soon as your hand clasped around the folded parchment, you blanched. The name he couldn't read slammed into you and left you nauseous. Practically tearing it out of his hands, you made quick work of stuffing the old piece of paper into your bag. It had to have fallen out when you'd so carelessly tugged out the crackers…
"An old letter," you said, dismayed to find your voice shaking almost as badly as your hands. Swallowing thickly in an attempt to throw off the panic rising in your throat, you clenched your hands into fists as if that would stop the trembling. It didn't. "I write in a code. For security—I…I n-need to go."
You scurried away and left Alan standing awkwardly by the fire, the Nirnish characters you'd inked so long ago onto the letter trying to stab you with sentimentality. The blurb had been written out of guilt, an apology to someone who would never be able to read it and one that you couldn't bring yourself to dispose of. You'd made a promise, and it was broken. You'd lost by letting the Thalmor rip Nirn to shreds in more ways than one. Eldarah Ralvayn was dead because of your failure.
You'd accepted that a long time ago, so why did the remorse still continue to gnaw at your insides?
The sun had fully risen by the time you stalked back to camp. Your sour mood only lightened a bit, and it thankfully didn't plummet again as Alan seemed to have sense enough not to do more than shoot you a weary glance when he caught sight of you. He didn't pry for once, and you were thankful.
After snatching up a pear for breakfast and gobbling it down in the privacy of your tent, you noted that no one seemed to be in a rush to get anywhere. Alan had been planning on returning to Haven. Or, so you thought he was. You didn't understand, then, why he decided to go check in with the Crossroads alone around noon.
Solas and Sera seemed just as confused as to the Herald of Andraste's motives. While they were curious as Alan rarely deviated from his usually strict schedules, you just shrugged and decided to take the down time where you could. It probably had something to do with him knowing you hadn't slept well the night before, and while that did irritate you (you weren't fragile, for Mara's sake), you weren't going to complain. At least, not too much.
So you lounged around camp with the other two elves, playing a few games of Wicked Grace with Sera despite your better judgment. The archer was better at the game than you'd have thought, but that could have been how half of what she said never made a lick of sense, so trying to catch her when she was lying was like trying to shoot a slaughterfish with an arrow in the dark. Solas slipped off partway through your game, only to return with an armful of herbs you couldn't identify and promptly began mixing together some sort of potion that smelled like death and lemongrass. You decided not to ponder on the smell—alchemy could take turns for the weird all too often. It was only after your third game of cards and after Solas firmly corked his final bottle that Alan came clanging his way back to camp, victorious look on his face and bag stuffed with supplies slung over his shoulder.
"Sera," he called, dropping the bag by his personal pack which. "We're heading back to Haven."
You ceased drumming your fingers on the stump you and she had been using as a table. "Isn't it a bit late?" When you made to heave yourself to your feet and begin taking down your tent, a hand on your shoulder stopped you.
Alan pushed you back to where you were sitting. "No, I said Sera. I need you and Solas to remain here and keep an eye on things." You furrowed your brow suspiciously.
"Why?"
He shrugged, beginning to tend to and prep his horse for travel. The Forder stallion, a contribution from Dennett and dubbed Crackerjack for whatever reason, nickered good-naturedly as he was saddled. "Solas is the Fade expert and can keep a better eye on this Rift situation than anyone else could conventionally. And you're the best sneak should a situation come up where you need to get back into the village. Something tells me Alexius wouldn't appreciate you wandering around in the open without me with you, unfortunately." It…made sense, but you swore if you found out that this decision had something to do with him knowing about your nightmares…
You puffed your cheeks out in resignation. "Fine. I'll send a crow to Leliana if I find anything about that amulet."
"And I will keep you informed if anything changes with the Veil," Solas added gravely, and you appreciated his seriousness. At least, you placated yourself, you weren't being left behind with Sera. There was a bright side to everything. If Alan would have decided to leave her behind with you, he'd return and find camp an elf short.
You and Solas watched (or listened, in your case) almost disinterestedly as the Herald and archer proceeded to break their parts of the camp, which really only amounted to rolling up tents and slinging on a few packs. Still, there was that sense of abandonment gnawing uncomfortably at you as half of your party just up and walked (or galloped, as the case was) away. It didn't make sense and was unfounded, but it was still there.
Still. Fucking. There.
Huffing a breath from your nose once the two were out of sight, you slumped down on a log and poked morosely at the fire with a stick. Compared to your completely undignified flop, Solas was fluid in sitting next to you and riffling through his pack of what smelled like herbs. The awkward silence was broken only by the clicking of a few empty potion bottles as the other mage gathered what he needed to continue his potion-making from earlier.
When the stick eventually caught fire, you gave up on your improvised form of entertainment and chucked the flaming twig onto the half-ashen logs. You smelled lemongrass again. "Alright, I'll bite—what the Void are you making?"
"A potion," Solas answered so matter-of-factly, it took a moment for you to realize he was being sarcastic. An eyebrow rose. Well, that was a change from the past few days of grumpy elf.
"No!" you drawled with just as much mockery dripping from your voice. "Really? Are you absolutely sure? I could have sworn it was candy!"
He gave you a look you could feel. It was even more amusing as you could vaguely see it from touching the log serving as your shared seating. When he didn't seem to deign giving you a verbal response, you shrugged fluidly.
"…very horrible candy…?"
Scoffing in what you figured served as a laugh, Solas shook his head. "You've an odd sense of humor, lethallan." At the term of familiarity, you couldn't help but frown. A twinge of guilt tried to spark. Solas did know that you weren't really Dalish, or at least that you weren't raised to it. Conversely, he had no clue that your skin was gold, your eyes a solid green, and your face pointed and sharper than what it perhaps should have been, devoid of vallaslin and obviously not Thedosian. You couldn't blame him for his ignorance—as a mistress of selling secrets, you were also good at keeping them until the time was right. And often that time never came. You could, however, blame yourself for letting fester his assumption that just because you spoke limited elvhen'an and claimed to be elven, you were the type he thought you were.
You had spun so many half-truths… Then again, you had to muse, I have my doubts anyone in the Inquisition is being entirely honest to anyone else. It seemed you were all a secretive bunch.
"I'm an odd person," you retorted, but it lacked its usual fire. "You didn't answer my question."
The look he gave you was actually wary. "I'm…afraid you won't be fond of the answer."
"I'm almost never 'fond of the answer'. Nice try," you drawled. Crossing your arms, you shifted your weight in a clear challenge. If the elf wanted to play the avoidance game, he'd have to work for it.
His already narrow blue eyes squinted further. "You could give The Iron Bull a run for his coin in observation, you know."
You sing-songed, "Not working!"
"It is alchemy," Solas tried in an irritated tone. He'd risen to the bait entirely too early, so you figured that he was still feeling some unease over the state of the Veil. "The intricacies of which I'm sure would bore you to tears."
It was a gamble and revealed more information than you were perhaps ready to give, but you reached into the crumbled, shapeless heap your bag had become leaning up against your feet and retrieved one of the stoppered glass vials. The liquid within was mostly clear, the bit of fog caused by the aloe paste not having dissolved entirely during brewing. Within floated stringy chunks of radish and (you shuddered) rat meat. Invisibility, more invisibility, and some muffling just in case—may my stomach's wrath have mercy on my soul. You held it up for the elf to see and swished its contents, the larger pieces making sickly plunk-ing sounds as you did so.
"It doesn't take a mage to practice alchemy. I'm rather familiar with it actually."
He wrinkled his pointed nose in disgust, and perhaps…was that a sneer you saw? "That…looks abhorrent."
"Oh, it is," you agreed with a jovial nod. "Tastes worse, but it'll turn you invisible at the drop of a hat. More or less."
Solas motioned towards the vial, "It looks like it was brewed in a cauldron!" You had to stifle a laugh at that, because it was just such a stereotypical picture, the masked little Altmeri witch cackling while toiling over a bubbling cauldron of some strange miasmic concoction. But then you had to admit that it was made in a cauldron, and your humor deflated some.
Suddenly self-conscious, you shoved the length of glass back into your pack. "Er, it was. I don't actually have an alembic anymore. It got broken a few years ago, and I never got around to…'acquiring' a replacement." And by "acquire", both you and Solas knew that you most likely meant "steal", or at least "obtain by highly suspicious means". Thankfully (or maybe not-so-thankfully), the elf didn't show any care over the legal technicalities of ownership.
"It's amazing your potions work at all."
Pausing, you considered this for a moment before responding. "I've found that if I'm careful enough, it's more making sure I have the right ingredients as opposed to the correct equipment. At this point, having a proper alembic would only serve to not make my potions so…" You scrunched your face up as you searched for a term.
Solas raised a brow and offered, "Discordant?"
"Yeah, I guess that's one way to put it. I was going more for 'terrifying', but 'discordant' works, too," you smirked.
"Actually," he said in the driest voice, "I rescind my statement. I believe 'terrifying' better suits the image."
You rolled your eyes. "Hardy-har-har. Very funny. You still didn't answer my question."
His entire façade seemed to almost deflate with agitation. "Why are you so interested?" Since when were you reluctant to lecture? The thought firmly collided with the filter between your brain and your mouth labeled "Don't Poke the Grouchy Elf Any More than Necessary Lest He Decide You Look Better as a Pile of Ash".
Instead, you wrinkled up your nose. "Because I'm curious what you could possibly be making that would cause it to smell like lemongrass and death."
Whatever response you were expecting, it wasn't a furrowing brow and spark of sheer confusion behind his usually guarded eyes. It took half a second longer for him to speak, which for Solas was saying something. "You can actually smell the components?" It was you turn to look confused.
"Er, yes? Why? Should I not be able to?" Internally, you were panicking a bit, trying to figure out a valid reason for why you being able to smell an herb as pungent as ground lemongrass could be abnormal. Your brain was drawing a blank, and that was bad because it also meant you couldn't think of excuses.
A sudden though decided to pry its way in, unbidden. "Wait, components? How is death a component?"
"No," he answered, and you childishly felt slighted at the lack of acknowledgement of your last question. "I'm making a type of sleeping draught. One that has no discernible scent." Solas' tenor was far too grave for your liking, the tone too muddled with questions to which you would never give straight answers. If your own response was just as riddled with guilt, well, no one commented.
"I…have a good nose?" That was what your whirling brain decided to pick? Mara have mercy, it was a wonder you'd survived your entire thirty-four years…
Solas made a strange hum in the back of his throat, but you knew it wasn't one of acceptance of your answer. He was accepting that you were going to deflect the question and was, calculatingly, deciding to let you drop it. For now. The elf was far from stupid, and there was a reason you tended to try and avoid him around Haven other than him being a mage. He was astute. Too astute, and it terrified you on some level because as easily as it felt that he could read you, you had barely been able to read him. Couple that with the fact that something about the elf just made you generally uncomfortable and fidget-y, he turned the tables on their heads and you did not know how to deal with it.
So instead, you clumsily juggled the problem and made a fool out of yourself every time the pieces knocked into your head. Smooth, Lys. Real smooth.
And you only dwelled on it for a moment because something the elf had uttered wedged firmly in your brain and refused to leave. "You said sleeping draught?" You pursed your lips. "Did Trevelyan put you up to this?"
"He said you hadn't been sleeping," Solas replied, "and asked if I could help. I was under the impression he had spoken with you about it."
"I am sleeping," you growled, suddenly realizing why he'd been unwilling to divulge what the potion was for. "Also, I told him I'm fine and he didn't need to go sticking his nose where it doesn't belong."
Solas quirked a brow. "He did not seem to share your disregard. He appeared quite worried."
"While I appreciate the sentiment," your voice practically dripped with contempt. You did not appreciate it. "He doesn't have a reason to be. I don't know what he thought to accomplish by asking for your help with a problem that he neither has nor understands."
"I will admit to being curious myself," he mused, choosing to ignore your obvious ire. "The Herald mentioned something of nightmares?"
You crossed your arms like a petulant child trying to avoid a lecture you knew you had no hope of dodging. "Yes, yes, nightmares keep me awake. I've dealt with them for years without any prying, and I don't want to talk about it."
"I only ask because nightmares are often spurred by demons in the Fade, or at least draw demons to the dreamer." Solas was giving you that uncomfortable glower that seemed to see right through you. "If they are recurring, it could mean that a particular entity has taken an interest in you."
You wanted to scoff. "Particular entity", indeed. It was probably having a grand old time laughing at you from...wherever It was. "No. They're not recurring. And I hardly see why a demon would find me interesting. I'm not a mage." Lies, lies, lies, lies...
Solas nodded. "True, however even ordinary people are at risk for attracting spirits as they sleep. It was still a possibility and a danger that I could not discount." You frowned, mulling the idea over. While any nightmares that repeated themselves tended not to even be dreams at all, the other memories you sometimes relived in your sleep were inherently terrifying, ones you tried to bury far in your subconscious, and you couldn't deny that you'd wondered before about them possibly being the work of a demon. After all, it wasn't as if you'd done anything to warrant Vaermina trying to torment you, and even then you questioned how well your mind could be pulled into the Quagmire through Thedas' magic. As far as you had tried to guess, what Thedas called the Fade, Nirn had called the Dreamsleeve. And you dreamt there just as anyone. How susceptible to possession or torment you were with your Daedric magic, however, you didn't know. There really was no way of finding out, either, unless a Thedosian mage agreed to help you out with an experiment, and there was no way in the sixteen realms you were about to let that happen.
"I wasn't aware non-mages could attract spirits in the Fade," you half-lied, trying to change the subject. You'd heard it bandied around that spirits tended to help spur dreams along, but you'd always thought it more them molding the dreamscape, not being drawn to the dreamer.
Your ignorance didn't matter in the end, though, as Solas' eyes lit up at the prospect of explaining something Fade related, and you considered the subject well and thoroughly changed with no small measure of relief.
Final Words: Again, sorry the conversation sucks. I love writing Solas as I don't have a lot of trouble doing so, I've found, but for some reason this conversation killed me.
Hope you liked it, guys. I tried.
R&R!
~SurreptitiousFox
