All Fall Down
By: SurreptitiousFox245
Disclaimer: I don't own Elder Scrolls or Dragon Age. All rights go to their respective peoples.
Quick Author's Note: Wow. Two in less than a week? I'm on a roll. Probably because this is a part I've been wanting to write for a while. Meh.
I've had a bit of a rough week, too. Just...yeah. That moment when you realize how two-faced your own family can be is rather quite draining. Anyway, this is another shorter one, but I feel like these are kind of awkward cut-off points where it's weird to just tack on another scene simply because of the flood of information and plot. I dunno. Hopefully, these'll start beefing up again once we get past the nitty-gritty stuff. Well, ENJOY!
Oh, and the song I'm quoting? If you want to understand the relationship between Ondolemar and Lys, listen to it. I literally wrote the aspects of their relationship out while listening to that song, and it inspired them more than I had originally intended. Plus, good song.
Chapter 18
"Sometimes before it gets better,
The darkness gets bigger.
The person that you'd take a bullet for is behind the trigger."
-Fall Out Boy, "Miss Missing You"
~Thedas – 9:41 Dragon~
Undilar had once given you the sage nugget of wisdom after a particularly nasty fight you'd gotten into as a teenager that being knocked unconscious was karma for doing something stupid to warrant it. Not because passing out was difficult, but because waking up afterwards was usually quite the miserable affair. Be it from a blow to the head, weakness from other injuries, too much to drink, et cetera, a headache of crippling proportions tended to follow close behind and make one regret every life decision one had ever made. Waking up this time was no different.
Except you weren't quite sure what your headache and nausea this time 'round was karma for—in this particular scenario, there were plenty of possibilities. They ranged from letting your guard down in the moment to actually trusting the sleazy, backstabbing, good-for-nothing, prissy, two-faced, lying, son-of-a-horker in the first place. If Falion could see you now, he'd be chanting a smug mantra of "I told you so" at just the right volume so as to aggravate the pounding behind your eyes and along the back of your skull.
Or maybe it all amounted to wrong place, wrong time. That was in a sense how you'd met Ondolemar, or at least made him resent you so much that he decided to play a triple agent.
Much as you liked to convince yourself that your excommunication from the Temple at fifteen was a direct result of mouthing off to a Thalmor authority, that event was less singular and more a straw-that-broke-the-guar's-back kind of thing. Being a rebellious little brat contributed, but most of it was that you had overheard something you weren't supposed to when you were around six years old. Better yet, you overheard something you weren't supposed to and then, eleven years after being sworn to secrecy on the matter, told the one person who under no circumstances was ever supposed to know what you knew. Ever.
You were a little girl twenty-eight years ago, running mischievously around the undercroft of the Temple to Auri-El in a well-practiced routine of attempting to avoid your lessons. You hadn't meant to, but after sneaking food from the kitchens and hiding in an empty storage cupboard in a room no one ever used, you accidentally overheard an argument between Undilar and the head priest.
Well, in actuality, your guardian was being scolded. You'd been curious. Undilar scolded you for plenty of things, but your six-year-old self hadn't been aware that adults could get in trouble, too. You wanted to know why!
What you overheard had definitely not been expected. Undilar had joined the clergy later in life than was typical, somewhere in his late teens and about five years before you had been brought to the Temple. Most joined as children and were either orphans or tributes from poor farmers. Full priests, like Undilar, took stricter vows than laymen, one of which was a rather clear vow of chastity.
You couldn't really imagine it, but it turns out Undilar had been a bit rebellious himself when he was younger. He broke his vows and dallied with a minor noblewoman who wound up bearing a child. She had been unwed at the time, so it didn't take much to figure out that the infant probably belonged to the priest she saw for confession far more frequently than necessary. Which was a good thing considering the woman died in childbirth. The remaining family refused to care for a potentially impure bastard, and so it was legally left an orphan as Undilar couldn't technically have right of custody. Gotta love selective breeding programs, you thought with a sneer.
Only ordained priests knew that the baby was the illegitimate offspring of one of their own—the more plentiful laymen and women had been none the wiser. The head priest had only allowed the child to be taken in by the Temple if Undilar never made any attempts to acknowledge it as his own and had limited interaction. To this day, you didn't know why Undilar chose his already broken vows instead of leaving to raise his flesh and blood, but he did. And he stalwartly kept to his promise, never saying more than five words to his son in the fifteen years you were there.
Two years later, and you arrived, a tiny squalling bundle abandoned on the side of the road like trash. You were assigned Undilar as your guardian, and he'd named you Vaelyswen, meaning something along the lines of "white petal", after the single stalk of amaryllis flowers amidst the weeds you'd been found beneath. Every ounce of ignored paternal instinct had been poured into raising you, and you had no idea how he managed to do that and simultaneously ignore his biological son not two feet away.
You and Ondolemar had been best friends, after all, despite the age difference—it was hard to ignore him.
Undilar had known you were hiding in the room and called you out after the head priest had left. He swore you to keep quiet on what you'd heard, and you remembered agreeing only because of how sad he looked. You didn't realize until years later the implications. Something had forced his hand on never being able to acknowledge his son, and the fact that he couldn't tore him up inside. Maybe you'd never know what exactly that something was, but your respect never wavered for the man and you had kept your silence as well as you were able. Your guardian, though, had been able to see that you and his son were good friends and was adamant that you didn't have to stop associating with Ondolemar just because he couldn't.
In the end, you figured it was a bad call. As teenagers, the two of you had been involved romantically for a time. It was quickly swept under the rug as was everything else the priests deemed unsavory considering you were the mouthy nonconformist who fell short of every standard and Ondolemar was pegged early for a surely prestigious and distinguished political career that you would definitely ruin. That hadn't stopped you, just made you sneakier, but it was what spurred you to tell Ondolemar that Undilar was his father.
The actual telling was ultimately accidental, blurted during an argument as a reason for the disapproval, and Ondolemar had avoided you after that. You suspected it was jealousy and couldn't blame him. As every orphan in that Temple did, he had vocalized countless times his desire to know his parents, to have a family. To find out so suddenly that not only had his father been with him all these years and knowingly ignored him, but that the very same parent had raised and loved another child as his own? And that the adopted child was also his lover, known this, and had kept it from him for over a decade? You weren't stupid. You realized how much that had to have hurt.
It was also a month later that you'd been kicked out, and you had your suspicions that Ondolemar had gone to the head priest, his own guardian, in his confusion. The clergy had all been acting strangely a few weeks before, watching you far too closely, and Undilar had uncharacteristically warned you to be mindful what you did around the others. You hadn't listened, of course, not realizing that they were looking for a reason to kick you or Undilar out until you had already been halfway to the Imperial City. You never found out of they managed to pin Undilar for anything, but it wasn't a secret that you were an easier target than him.
Seven and a half years later, you ran into Ondolemar in Markarth. He'd been…overjoyed to see you, and you admitted to yourself that you had missed him. Holding a high-ranking position within the Thalmor (much as he groused about being in Markarth, the position was technically as an ambassador to the Jarl's court and one of honor), he had actually been the one to bring up the idea of spying for you. You hadn't questioned it. Why would you? The man you loved had reassured you that he held no more ill-feelings—it hadn't been you fault that Undilar had done what he had done, he claimed. You had been a child told to keep a secret by an authority. Of course you were going to follow, and it also wasn't like you could control what your guardian did or didn't do. He agreed it hadn't been your fault and apologized for ever having thought it. He'd just been confused.
You'd believed him. But you'd been wrong.
Even if he had been telling the truth, that didn't change the fact that at the last, vital moment, he brought Thalmor right to you. He led to you being captured and taken to that mountain top. He was responsible for the Thalmor gaining the knowledge and power they needed to finally carry out their goals, knowledge you and your group had kept from them. He had been the one to betray you. Whether it was out of hate, guilt, fear, a mistake, or whatever excuse could be fabricated, you didn't care. You wanted the slimy bastard to rot in Oblivion for what he did, and you'd gladly send himself there yourself.
An eye for an eye may leave the whole world blind, but shit—what could you lose? Your eye? Revenge had already blinded you. A little more wouldn't hurt.
When you finally pulled yourself fully from the dregs of unconsciousness, you realized that you were back in Redcliffe's dungeons. Particularly you were in an interrogation chamber. Or, in other less political terms, it was a torture chamber. Had you not known better, you'd have thought by all the aching in your joints that they'd started on you prematurely. However, you knew Ondolemar, if not the rumors around Tevinter torture methods. They wanted you awake.
A brief moment was spent wondering about the others, but you didn't get much chance to ponder if they were alright before someone noisily entered the room. From the footsteps, they were a slight build, so you suspected they were being loud for your benefit. He didn't speak, just pulled up a chair and stared at you, so you also suspected it was probably the subject of your loathing.
You didn't open your eyes. You could feel the cold slab of metal you were chained to and could tell that you'd been changed into a short sleeved tunic, divested of anything that would hide your appearance. With so much skin contact on something lacking the enchantments you kept on clothes to prevent the touch-sight from being overwhelming, you knew you'd have a frighteningly clear view of the room if you were to look. So you didn't. You didn't want to see him, nor did you want to look and not see him. So you didn't.
"I know you're awake," he said after a few more awkward minutes. Ignoring the jolt of old happiness and fresh hurt that bubbled up when Ondolemar's voice washed over you took more effort than you were prepared for. On some level, this disgusted you. You thought you were past this.
It seemed he didn't like you not answering. "Stop being childish, Vaelyswen. It doesn't become you." Oh, childish, were you? Defiantly, you cracked a squinting eye open against the agony that was torchlight, and then another, before sending him the harshest glare you could manage. A rueful grin just split his lips in two.
"There are those eyes of yours!" he cooed, almost fascinated in a sick kind of way. His posture, too, was just...all wrong. You outwardly remained as impassive as you could, but somewhere in the mess of emotions creating a hurricane in your mind, you wondered just what had caused this once proud mer to spiral so much. He had never been so...unhinged. That it was obvious this quickly was disconcerting. "Shame what happened to them, you know. They were always your best feature."
You croaked around a heavy, groggy tongue, "What d'you want?" Wide-eyed in mocking affront, Ondolemar leaned heavily back in his chair.
"What do I want?" He mimicked, spreading his arms. "A good many things. Eternity. Order, to name a few."
Stare not wavering, you eyed him with disbelief. "Why help the Venatori?" You winced as your head throbbed despite your best efforts. How hard had you been hit? Did they use a bloody sledgehammer?
The other Altmer just smirked. "Once a rebel, always a rebel. Don't you understand how interrogations work, my dear? Yet here you are asking all the questions!"
"Then ask," you muttered, breaking your stare to gaze instead at the rafters. He was the reason you hated that nickname. "Not playin' games."
Silence dragged on, but you could feel Ondolemar's eyes boring into your skin. If he didn't want you to voice the thousands of questions you had boiling over for eleven years, then fine. You wouldn't speak at all, if that's what this came to. He wasn't going to lead you around in circles for the fun of it. There would be no novelty had in your confusion even if you had to break your mind yourself.
You gave him what he wanted once, the forgiveness. Never again.
"Very well then," hummed the Thalmor finally. His stance in the chair turned more casual, causing the black robes he was draped in to sprawl across the floor in careless waves of wool and velvet. They curiously weren't Thalmor robes, nor Venatori, nor of the anonymous cultists. "What do you want, Vae?"
You sneered. "Oh, lots. Peace. Rest. To name a few." The jab caused Ondolemar to frown.
"And you think you'll find that here?" He gestured to the room, but you knew he was referencing the whole of Thedas.
"Coulda' back n' Skyrim." The bite in your voice was bitter and harsh. "Had here, 'fore this mess."
His responding laugh was mocking, disbelieving, and astounded all rolled into one. "Did you, really, though? You can't show a hand, let alone your face! The closest things to our kind are reviled as vermin. No, so long as we remain, there is no peace. No rest. No order. Eternity was lost to this cesspit as it was to ours. Because of humans—as it was to ours."
"Yours."
Mouth open to continue his diatribe, Ondolemar stopped and tilted his head. "I'm sorry?"
"'Our kind'?" You laughed roughly. "Y'mean your kind. Don't lump me with you. 'M not like that."
He scoffed condescendingly. "You can't change what you are. What we are."
"An' just what is that, huh?" you laughed again, more like cackled, as your headache tried to get incrementally worse. "Weird skin and pointy ears? Wide-eyed and tall?"
Ondolemar sniffed with some disdain carefully buried behind his eyes. "Superior, of course." You almost couldn't believe it. Even before, when he'd betrayed you, he hadn't put so much stock in this…this…propaganda he was spewing. But you could tell it wasn't an act. He truly had conviction in what he was saying, something he'd lacked in spades before.
Son of a bitch… "You're insane." It wasn't an accusation. It was an observation. He didn't even look fazed at it, either-just continued to stare at you with those eyes blown open too wide, that look of simultaneous adoration and hatred and something else you couldn't place.
When he didn't answer or make any attempts to move, you dared lock eyes with him again. You searched and regretfully found what you were looking for. "Why'd you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Try summonin' Hermaeus Mora?" the slurring from grogginess was beginning to ebb away, thankfully. "Did you think he could…send you back?"
Predictably, his face clammed up and he turned suspicious too quickly. "How do you figure that, now?"
You peeled your gaze away from his and back to the ceiling. Staring at the ceiling as opposed to him would make it bearable. Probably. "Black spots in the sclera. Classic sign of exposure to Mora. Mild signs of insanity. By the spots, you weren't in contact with him long enough to develop that, though. What was it for?"
"It didn't turn out as it should have."
"So you wanted to fix your own gods damned mistake," you said, sighing. "Or, better yet, you wanted to know why it didn't work. So you asked Mora. You lot managed to get rid of Nirn, but not Mundus like you wanted. Some if not everybody from Nirn was displaced because you weren't counting on there actually being other worlds for them to be displaced to. Now you're…what…working with the people who created the Breach? To finish what you started?"
As each word left your mouth, Ondolemar got angrier. Angrier until he finally stood from his chair, walked over to where you were chained, and roughly took your jaw in his hand. You gasped at the shock, but made sure to defiantly stare him down. He wasn't going to break you. Not again. He needed to see that.
"Stop talking!" he hissed, borderline manic. "You know nothing! The Venatori are just puppets to the Elder One." There it was again, Elder One. Those lyrium-infected Templars had said the same thing…was this Elder One the person responsible for the Breach? You filed the name away. Something told you it would be important.
"But you're not Venatori," you said. "Alexius was deferring to you, yes, but you're not wearing the robes. If he deferred because you're higher in authority, then why aren't you—?" His grip tightened, effectively silencing you. He didn't seem to like it when the gears in your head turned too close to the truth.
"We control the Venatori!" Guttural indignity etched lines on the fine angles of Ondolemar's face and made the black in his eyes stand out.
You choked, "And the Elder One controls you?" Whether it was the question or the fact that your lips were probably turning ashen from lack of oxygen, the other elf released his hold on you in increments. You greedily sucked in air, but didn't make any other indication that your former lover strangling you in a fit of rage had rattled you. Which it had. Ondolemar was forced to act the part as a Thalmor agent, but he had never been a violent person. The whole gambit of personality switches he had displayed in the past ten minutes were a complete one-eighty to who he was. Or, who you thought he was. Contact with Hermaeus Mora would not have done this to such an extent. There was more going on than you could see.
His head was bowed as he took several steps back. You thought you saw his hands shaking, but he hid them in the folds of his robes before you could get a good enough look. "You don't have foresight here. Not anymore. You don't know what you're talking about." Curiously, it sounded like he was saying that more to convince himself than you. You were achingly aware every day that you didn't See anymore. Your developing visions as a young adult had been part of Idgrod's motive for taking you in, and she helped you hone the gift until you had almost complete control over it. You could see ambushes before they happened, predict troop movements with a decent level of accuracy—it was why she put you in charge.
But you hadn't Seen since coming to Thedas. And you wanted to know how Ondolemar knew that.
"I never needed foresight to put the pieces together," you murmured softly. "You know that." This time, it was Ondolemar refusing to meet your eyes out speak, so you decided to test the proverbial waters.
"The Venatori control the mages, and you control the Venatori. By you, I'm assuming you mean...Thalmor? Or what's left of you. However, this Elder One. You're not controlled by him. You only mentioned him when I insinuated that the Venatori alone were behind the Breach. You claimed they're his puppets but also that you control them as well. The only way, then, for you to run the puppets is to control the puppet master. Whatever group you're running, the Elder One doesn't control you. You control him."
A smirk snaked its way onto his face. "You're close. And you're right, you always were perceptive. But you're wrong about who we are." A thin hand reached into his collar to pull out a familiar dragon pendant dangling on an unassuming brown cord. "I'm curious if you can figure it out before the week is up. Shall we find out?" He let it drop to rest atop his robes, grinning slyly before turning and walking out of the room without another word.
Other than a lump on the back of your head and probably a bruised larynx, you surprisingly didn't receive any more injuries before two guards removed you from the table and unceremoniously tossed you into a tiny cell. You kept your eyes closed the whole way and even after they left you in there because your eyes hurt. Even though you did use them, it was in a limited fashion because it had to be. As Ondolemar had so graciously pointed out, you had to keep yourself covered. Your sight worked better via direct contact with skin, and the more contact there was, the farther and better you could see. Fabric limited that, and you'd placed the enchantments on your clothes so that the little bit you could see through cloth wouldn't distract you so much. You couldn't function by either relying on bad vision or trying to ignore what there was. It was one or the other, and you couldn't exactly walk around barefoot in hacked off breeches and a tank top. So you had chosen to barely use it at all.
You heard the soldiers leave the cell block, probably to stand guard outside the door, and forced yourself into a sitting position. Eyes still squeezed shut, you ran a shaking hand through your hair to measure the severity of the knot swelling on your skull (not too bad), and then brought the limb to flop in your lap. You glared at it as if it had offended you by trembling. In a way, it had. The whole conversation with Ondolemar had been more nerve wracking than you let on. Honestly, probably one of the more frightening conversations you'd had in a while.
At least, you thought so until a voice from somewhere across the block called out. "Wait…Prowler?"
Shit and two is eight—dammit Tethras!
"Not a word, dwarf." A whisper was about all you could manage around the scratchiness. "Not a single, bloody word or I swear on Mehrunes Dagon's right arms, I will find a way out of this cell and end you."
"Right arms?"
"He has four—long story," at his mumble of approval, you actually pried your eyes open and sent him a glare. "One I'm not telling right now, thank you."
However, it didn't have the intended response. Instead, his eyes were blown wide, brows cringing together. "Shit, Lys, your eyes—!"
You cut him off. "Yes, I'm well aware."
"What did they do to you? We knew they took you off so that robed guy could talk to you, but we didn't really know why…" You shrugged, shuffling over to the bars so you could grip them. Varric was in the cell directly across from yours, and it appeared from your vantage point at least that there was no one else in the block. Odd.
"Other than Ondolemar trying to choke me at one point, nothing."
He looked downright confused as he gripped the bars to his own cell. "Wait, so you've always been…?"
"Blind? Yes."
"You're not acting like any blind person I've ever known."
You raised a brow. "Known a lot of blind people, have you?" The deflection was poor. You knew exactly what he was referencing—the fact that you were openly making eye contact with him, that your eyes weren't blankly staring off into some corner of space. Even though they were filmed over from disuse, your eyes weren't unfocused.
"A few," Varric replied, obviously humoring you despite the humorless situation. "Please don't tell me it's some magic-y shit."
"It's not any 'magic-y shit'," you said, then paused a moment and amended, "Probably." And you grinned because while you may not have particularly been fond of the dwarf due to his connections, the banter was almost therapeutic after seeing Ondolemar. After all of the revelations that came with it.
You weren't alone here.
Shockingly, that sentiment wasn't nearly as comforting as you had expected it to be.
Finally, you took pity on the poor dwarf and elaborated. "I've been blind for eleven years. Mostly, anyway. I don't exactly know how, but if I have skin contact with an object, I can sort of see it and some of what surrounds it. The more skin is touching, the more I can see."
"Ah," he hummed. "I can see how that would…be a problem. Maybe I should change your nickname to 'Goldie'. What do you think?"
"I think I will find something sharp to murder you with." Shaking your head, you let all vestiges of humor dissipate. "What happened?"
Growing serious now, the archer scrubbed a bruised hand along his face. "Where to start? Ambush worked. Alexius started rambling about some Elder One after Sparkler said some stuff. Then he said something about Green being a mistake, started casting some of his time magic, Sparkler disrupted it, and then he and Alan just…vanished."
Your eyes about bugged out of your head. "Vanished?!" To your dismay, Varric only nodded.
"Yeah," he mumbled. "I dunno, maybe they're still alive somewhere, but shit—I don't know. I've seen too many spells make someone disappear. They don't reappear very often."
"What about after? Why'd you all get rounded up in that room?"
"Turns out Alexius had reinforcements. That Ondo guy. Bunch of those cultist freaks you and Chuckles ran into in that mine came pouring out of those servant tunnels you used. Rounded all of us up before we could really do much about it. That guy just took charge, started asking where you were. He forced one of the younger kids to take a scout's armor and go find you, lure you here. Guess it worked." Will, you thought, gritting your teeth.
Varric continued, "We didn't know what he was. Bunch of the scouts thought he was possessed, but Chuckles I guess could tell he wasn't. I don't know how that shit works. But he kept demanding where you were, and when we asked him what in Andraste's flaming knickers he was, he kept saying that we should ask you when you showed up. He was pretty sure you would. Sounded like he knew you." The rogue sent you a meaningful look.
You gave him the condensed version. If you were right, there would be plenty of time for the extended one later. It felt like you were going to be here for a while. "I'm from another world. I was raised in a Temple by a priest named Undilar. Ondolemar was raised there, too. We were good friends, I found out when I was a child that Undilar was actually Ondolemar's biological father but was forbidden from acknowledging him. Accidentally told him years later, he got pissed, I got kicked out of the Temple, another several years later I ran into him again, he made me think things were good, then he stabbed me in the back and I ended up here."
Varric's look was a bit blank. "Damn."
You nodded. "Yeah."
"There's more to it than that," He said suspiciously.
"Later," you waved him off. "Where are the others? We need to figure out what to do from here." And so the two of you settled down to begin carefully plotting. Thankfully, the dwarf didn't attempt prying any further, but you knew that if you were going to be in the same block as him for the foreseeable future, then he wasn't going to let you dodge the question. He'd get bored eventually and bug you about it relentlessly.
For now, though, you were firmly in the realm of plans and prison breaks, so you decided to bask in the familiar territory while you could.
In memory of Louis "Carl" Grover 5/23/29-8/10/16—you were the grandfather to me I otherwise would never have gotten to have. There are no words written or spoken that can accurately express just how much that means to me, how grateful I am to have known you, and how much I am going to miss you. I love you.
Final Words: So...did you see it coming? Huh? Huh? Huh? *grins like a maniac* I surprised myself deciding that not only was Ondolemar going to be romantically involved with Lys and betray her, but also that Undilar was going to be his father. I had a Darth Vader moment, methinks.
Those of you wanting Daedra to make an appearance? Oh, we're getting Daedra. We're so getting Daedra. But it's not who you're thinking.
R&R!
~SurreptitiousFox
