There is a package waiting for her.
"Arrived two days ago," an agent says. "There's a letter too that come last week. We thought to wait until you got here when we heard word you were on the way. A thousand apologies if it was urgent, but-"
She waves them away, waits until the door is shut before ripping into the thick envelope. The paper is heavy and expensive, lightly perfumed even after all this time, and she doesn't have to see the elegant curves or the sunburst seal inside first to know who it is from. Vivienne's note is short.
"I am not often made speechless and I suspect there is more at play here than your mere intuition. I do hope you will share the methods behind your insight soon. For our other business, I must inform you I have no news either way, but will continue to keep it as a top priority..."
There is another note tucked inside, the note Keela handed to her friend all those weeks ago. The Inquisitor's seal is flaked and broken now to easily reveal the one word scrawled across the center, the same word printed at the end of Vivienne's correspondence: Victoria. If there is one decision she can be proud of in the twisted future, it is lifting her voice in support of the First Enchanter. There is hope for something more, something better, and in the end it isn't only the Chantry that drives this world to madness.
A quick burst of fire and the parchment blackens and curls to drift as cinders through the air. The package, she knows, is not from Vivienne. It is not overly large, wrapped in coarse paper and twine, and she takes her time untwisting it like it is all made of thorns. A note inside contains the healer of Skyhold's signature scrawled in smeared ink with directions and a warning for the bottle resting inside. Keela reaches out but pauses, thoughts darker than the thick substance seen through etched glass.
Instead she closes it and distracts herself in her new surroundings. The former Knight-Captain has given up his holdings within the keep for her use, but there is still evidence of Rylen throughout the room, like a shaving kit sitting beside a bowl of water. She opens the stout jar of cream and inhales the scent, something with sage and bergamot, and it takes her back to those brief, cold days and warmer nights spent with him in Haven. It seems so long ago, another life.
Papers pile all of the desk in a scattered array she does her best to resist straightening, pieces that don't seem to be of much urgency as she follows the sharp cut of his writing. Unlike his desk, the writing is succinct, clean, save for the end of his n's. They curl up and away like pioneering vines and she wonders if it's done on purpose. From all she can remember of him, she has her suspicions. There is a scrap of cloth tucked beneath some books there too. Gently she picks it up and scans the tattered edges and faded designs. Red and blue, the sigil of his house etched in gold that once must have shined but now is cracked and crumbling.
She loved him, once.
Not in the past, not now. In some time that no longer exists, and there shouldn't be anything left from what is gone, but she feels something and she knows it is true. The crystal's memories of Solas are bright, but the ones of Rylen are brighter, things not dulled by duty or damaged by distrust. It is hard to look at them at first, like they are a betrayal, like they can't be real. It seems her future self thinks something similar for how long it takes to confess her affection properly. Now she wishes she hadn't given the stone to Dorian so she can take one more look despite the way her heart rebels.
"Inquisitor."
She is not easily startled and yet jumps to find the captain perched at the door, hand raised to the stone threshold as if he might knock upon it. "Rylen."
"Ah, you found it." He crosses the room and gently takes the cloth from her, thumb brushing over the sigil fondly. "A trinket Mum gave me before I skipped off into service. Templars aren't supposed to keep such things, but naught a boy or lass I knew didn't have something squirreled a way from home. The Commander confessed to have kept a coin."
It takes a moment to search for it, but she finds an appropriate smile for the occasion. Everything has felt so askew for weeks, and she is tired of feeling tossed on this roiling ocean. "So, accommodations up to your specifications?" he asks. "Need anything more?"
"Everything is fine, thank you."
"Know how long you'll be staying on?"
"Little more than a week. I will wait for Rainier to arrive on his way to Adamant. I imagine it will be some time before our paths cross again." She knows the next time she meets with the once false and soon to be true Warden - in the dark of the Deep Roads and before the burning heart of something strange. Rylen is there too, she remembers, and it is hard to tell which one of them is more relieved to see the other when the rubble clears away.
The pauses between them now are awkward, she knows it, but it's difficult to spin around in the dance of small talk and proper etiquette with him. They were never ones for protocol from the start but she is afraid to fall into that effortlessness they had only begun to explore before disaster in Haven and a long dreamed about kiss in its copy. If Rylen had never been sent to the west, if Solas had been kind, what world might she live in now? Dangerous thoughts. Dangerous and pointless. This is her world and she has never before shirked away from reality and its challenges.
Rylen clears his throat. "That's well and good then. I'll allow you to settle in proper-"
"I'm sorry. It has been...a long journey."
"I can imagine. Heard all about your fight with Corypheus up in the clouds and your personal vendetta against every poor grain of sand in this place lately. You always had a knack for the dramatic, Herald."
"I never named myself that."
He smiles. "Never heard you deny it either, Your Worship."
She laughs at that, laughs, and realizes how much she has missed it. "I am sure your adventures in the Approach have been just as exciting."
"Down right riveting."
"You'll have to tell me all about them."
"Be glad to, lass. Maybe tonight over a pint, like old times?" She shrinks away from him a bit at the thought - not that it displeases her but because it doesn't and yet it is much too soon for these feelings to be there at all, if they even are more than remnants gone. At seeing her hesitation, Rylen drops his expression into something with more care. "Sorry to have overstepped, M'Lady. Looks like I've been out of polite society for a bit too long."
"There is no need to apologize. Some other time. I would like to turn in early this evening."
"Of course. Long journey, as you said. I'll take my leave then." He gives a quick bow. "Goodnight, Inquisitor."
"Goodnight." She leans back against the table when he shuts the door, heaves a sigh that she wishes would clear her head as much as it clears her lungs. Clarity and control is what she needs, not more complications. She is stronger than all this, stronger than the wraith she becomes - she just needs time to find a way forward that will not see such undoing again.
When she manages to fall asleep there is a presence waiting for her, a gentle touch asking permission to drift into her dreams, and she almost forces herself awake before allowing them entrance. The Fade forms into an unfamiliar landscape - a great sweep of plains swaying with tall grain, mountains large and grey in the distance. A single tree stands upon a little hill and she climbs it to find him standing in its shade. He looks no different, calm and quiet, and yet eyes filled with a weight much heavier than ever before.
"What is it, Solas?" she asks when there is nothing but the whisper of wind between them for a few long moments.
"You wished to speak to me."
"You heard of my letters already?" She sent a few, to Skyhold and other important keeps, in hopes one of his spies might stumble upon it and send him word. She refused to allow any of his people to accompany her west. The thought of them sending information about her to him made her stomach pitch.
He pauses before answering. "I have heard you calling in your dreams."
She knows why he would hesitate. It means he has been listening and that reality is something she doesn't really want, but she cannot blame him for answering when this is what she had been intending to happen, hoping might occur despite her misgivings. Having it work doesn't bring her much happiness.
"I need to speak to you about your plans. Were you successful in finding whatever power you were after?"
"I was." His brow is troubled however, as if he cannot understand how it could be so, as if whatever he has done worked but did not go as he intended.
"What did you do?" If he has birthed some new horror, she would know it - the sin is as much hers as it is his for giving her blessing.
"I visited Mythal. In the past I assimilated her powers under somewhat false pretenses. She thought to thwart my plans by her own machinations afterward, but I was made aware of them. I...confessed my true intentions this time, told the tale of the future and what I made of our people and our power, and even then she willingly relented her strength."
"Why?"
"She did not say, not directly. I am still attempting to unravel her finals words."
Mythal. "Does that mean I am your servant now?" The idea boils her blood, sees a sharp shame clawing its way up her spine. Even so, something like relief trickles through her mind - perhaps that's why can't recognize herself through the flashes in the crystal, how she becomes something she never would want. Something broken and defeated.
"No. Whatever of her will remains, you are still tied to its fate apart from mine. It has always been this way."
Keela frowns, theories going up in flames although she should know better. Nothing is ever so simple. "And what are your intentions now?"
"As of now, I seek to find an alternative means of removing the mark without excessive damage. I have not been as successful in that endeavor."
"And that is all?"
"If there is something you would want of me, you need only ask it."
She wants a million things, bites her tongue from wishing to know why he wouldn't bow to her will before. "I need to know you aren't thinking of using your power to reverse what has happened. To bring that future back somehow. To bring her back."
Once again he takes a moment to answer, falling back into the embrace of the tree first, the posture of his shoulders slumping further. "I confess I have given the concept considerations. Despite the enormity of power needed, there has already likely been untold damage done to this world with the current reverse of time. Things cannot simply cease to be. They are altered, in what ways and to what cost we can only stipulate now. To reverse this action, no, I would not attempt it."
"I need to hear you swear it, Solas." There was a time when such things were not needed, when she trusted him without fault, and she can see the longing for such days in a flash across his eyes.
"I swear it. What has been done, is done. I have no further plans to mettle with the fate of Thedas, for all the good my interventions have done before."
"A revelation come too late. It is not true what they say of better late than never, Solas. Not in this case at least."
"You are right. I thought, for a moment...but you are right. I sacrificed everything to achieve my goal. Not only the future of your world but the possibilities of futures for myself. I knew the cost."
A memory from the crystal blooms before her. "You chose the Din'Shiral."
"Yes."
"And yet you are the only one who has lived. Not death for yourself, but for everyone else around you." He doesn't answer, but the way he looks away, brow crumbling under his transgression, is enough. She doesn't have to ask if it was all worth it either - she has witnessed pieces of his failing world, feels some of his pain in her own heart.
Part of her wants to beg him to undo what has been done no matter the new cost. To return them to a time when they are alive, with their daughter unspoiled by her parents' legacies. A selfish wish. The world is mended yet utterly broken in that future, but it could be theirs. He has sworn not to mettle with this magic and she must do the same. It is the best chance for Thedas even if it is the end for them.
"We are finished, Solas." It feels like she has to drag the words from her throat as they try to dig in with claws. She's known it from the moment she left Skyhold, but it is another thing to say it out loud. Their fate has been dangling on one last thread and it is she that will finally cut it loose regardless of what will, or what now won't, happen. No matter that she will never see her daughter in the flesh as a result. Whatever path is ahead, she cannot, will not, walk it with him this time. "There can be no us after this."
He dips his head, absorbing what he must have realized already as well. There is only silence at first and she doesn't expect him to beg her to reconsider, to bargain for a life they will both be denying, but those same, weak parts of her want him to give in. To rage with her, to throw the world into chaos together as one this time and damn what may happen.
In this timeline, however, they are both stronger than their desires for all the horrors experienced and seen through crystal. Solas looks at her with eyes defeated but sure. "I know. It is...better this way. Thedas will be free of my influence and so will you. That is my only hope and condolence, the only I shall seek. That you will have a chance at happiness-"
"I was happy!" Around her, stalks of wheat begin to catch fire, and she steps forward with all the promise of a landslide. Keela grabs onto his collar, yanking him forward with force. "I was happy with you! It was...it was real for me too, Solas."
After a moment he wraps his fingers around hers and she allows it, for one last time. "To hear you say it is a gift I do not deserve."
Her anger becomes smoke on the breeze - she is only tired, tired and tattered and wanting for so much more than this. "You deserved more, if only you would have let yourself have it."
A smile, small and wistful. "Perhaps in another world..."
Keela doesn't mention that this was supposed to be another world. It has proven to be too tangled with the last and she wonders why their daughter chose to send him back to now instead of some other time, like when she is just a child and they are separated but there are choices. It would not have been better for Thedas, but it would have kept her with Keela at least, kept her alive when now...
"What was she like?" she asks, for if Fenera is only to be a memory she will be remembered.
"I cannot say many things for certain. She was attempting to convince me into believing she was you, so for that I can only say she was very clever. Courageous, for all that she endured. A talented fighter who favored daggers and utilized fire, but I am of the mind another was her preferred element. Lightning, perhaps. She had a skill for painting as well."
She looks at him with an arched brow. "And you thought I had suddenly acquired such skill?"
"As it turned out, it took little effort on her part to convince me, or at least to ensnare me within her web. I was...I am..."
"What?"
"After your death, I chose to forget my own humanity. The day I learned that you..." He shakes his head. "I let the world beyond Elvhenan perish because you were no longer within it and became that most terrible beast of legend. With Fenera's first drawing, I began to remember. I became myself again. It is a debt I can never truly repay."
This second chance to save her world is something Keela can never repay either, except for making sure history doesn't repeat itself. Fenera must have known this. Selfless is an attribute she would add, for how little she knows of her daughter this must be true. If only Keela had been the same - she could have saved them all from this fate. It is her fault that Fenera had to live and die at all.
She takes a few steps away from Solas and keeps retreating, feels cold as his hands slide away from hers, but it's a shock she welcomes. This has gone on long enough. "Come to me when you have found a way to remove the mark. There is time, if I remember? It didn't seem to bother me until the Exalted Council. I will try not to deviate too much from the near future I glimpsed in the crystal. I imagine that would create more problems."
"Keela." Against her better judgement she turns to face him again. There is sorrow to be found in his features, a lost hope like a banner torn and drifting from a captured keep. "I..."
"I know, Solas." She looks at him for a few more heartbeats, with a heart that aches and burns and was once his, before she pulls the dream apart.
The next few days pass in a blur. Her mind fills with the history of two lifetimes as she relives every conversation between her and Solas. Hindsight is a frustrating thing, for the cracks in his false facade are so obvious now when before she was blinded by trust, by love, by a hope that his secrets were things to be overcome, not things that would overcome them all. She feels trapped between worlds, stuck in the doldrums of her life again. The feeling of helplessness is not something she enjoys - the brokenness of her heart something she never expected.
When sleep is simply an animal she cannot tame, she rises and walks the parapets of Griffon Wing Keep. There is barely a touch of warmth left in the rough stone beneath her hand as she trails it behind her, her thoughts leagues ahead on the puzzle of the future. The air is chilled enough to warrant a jacket and she tugs it closer to her face as stray wind plays with her hair. She enjoys the baking, bright days in the desert more, but there is something comforting about the quiet night, the thousands of stars that seem close enough to touch. There is nothing to see when she looks beyond the walls, dunes draped in darkness, distance and depth things unknown.
The calm usually helps her find balance again, but tonight promises only discord as a familiar voice breaks apart the silence. "You haven't looked at it yet."
Cole manifests from the shadows, sand spilling from the brim of his hat when he tips it back to look at her with curious eyes. "Cole? What are you doing here? When did you get here?" she asks when the initial shock of his presences wears away.
"Now."
"But why?"
"Sera was tired of me. She can think very loud and I don't think I can do that with a broom. Thom needed me, but you need me more right now."
The story finally clicks. "You were traveling with Rainier to Adamant."
"Yes. He doesn't fear dying. Warden name stolen but cared for like the crest he polishes over and over. Now he will have his own to hold and he worries it will rust no matter how hard he scrubs. Does a Rainier deserve to be a Blackwall? He doesn't know, but he wants to know."
"He will make a good Warden."
"Yes. You know it because it happened, but it didn't. Your thoughts hurt, like seagulls that are too many and too loud." Cole purses his lips. "You kill me."
Keela swallows a lump in her throat, tries to blink away that memory from the crystal. It is one not easily forgotten for Cole's death, for the way Solas looks defeated in his victory when he sees her pregnant for the first time. "I did. It will not happen like that again."
"How do you know?"
"Cole-"
"You helped me. You will always help me. Now I want to help you." He flicks his wrist and a piece of folded parchment appears between his fingers. She knows what it is for the bent corner, the soft sepia color, the stain of ink smudged on the side. A hand goes to her pocket where it should be even though she knows it's no longer there, where it's been for weeks and weeks, and all she finds is a surge of panic.
"Cole..."
She wants to be herself again, to not be held back by these chains of emotion that cloud everything, that make her feel small and powerless when she has always felt in control. Perhaps she could convince him to steal away the memories inside her mind like she's watched him do for others, to take away these burdens. Any price to pay is better than what she has been left with.
"You don't want that. You don't want to look because then it'll really be real. What we had was real. He never got to say it this time, but it's still true. She was real too, a truth that hurts and you always want it no matter the pain. Lies are brambles and poison, truth is the heat of a wound cauterized, but this feels like dying. It just hurts more because it's your heart."
She scoffs. "And if I look it will simply stop?"
"No. It'll hurt more, but then it won't. You have to hold it before you can let it go." He holds the paper out for her. "Look."
She knows he's right. She can't keep pushing this away, pretending it doesn't matter to her because it didn't truly happen now, because the thought of a family was just a tiny seed she barely watered and yet she can't deny took root despite her other designs. She must face this like any other adversary she's known. Dragons and darkspawn, magisters and gods, beasts of terror and teeth - she has charged forward undaunted before and needs to assemble her courage again, for a part of herself she never thought needed armored.
With a trembling breath she takes it and unfolds it before she can change her mind like she has for all these days past. It is not like looking in a mirror even though there are similarities- there are heavier waves through black hair, a nose that remains straight and unbroken. The eyes are the same but have seen different things, live a different life. Solas is there too, every freckle and dimple a reminder, and she's not sure whose stubbornness is more apparent in the cut of her jaw, but this woman in her hands is all her own, youthful and beautiful, with tragedy and pride in the air around her, and she is...she is...
"Perfect," Cole says, voice awed and full of emotions raging inside. "It's what he thought too."
"No." She shoves the paper into his chest but it is not so easily forsaken. Fenera's face is there when she closes her eyes and it all hurts, like a pressure on her chest pushing down and even so there is an emptiness growing, a vastness of nothing when she tries to reach out for purchase. There is no denying or hiding anymore, for better or ill- her daughter, their daughter, was real and now will only exist in stone and paper.
This is what they have created, and what they have destroyed.
"No," Keela repeats and retreats into the dark.