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Chapter Text

In the last hour before the launch, Liara took the opportunity to trail her fingers over the stasis pod a final time. It was a bit late for second (or third, or fourth) thoughts, but doubts still nipped at her mind. Doubts had been her constant companion since her earliest memories, but this moment had a sense of finality to it that other inflection points had not. Not even when Liara had turned Shepard’s body over to Cerberus had the weight of her decisions pressed upon her so. That time of course, Shepard had been dead, all the way dead, and it wasn’t as though anything Liara had done could have made things any worse for Shepard.

Shepard had gotten better. Then worse again. And now, six months after British soldiers had pulled a wheezing slab of bleeding meat held together by N7 armor and spite from the ruins of London, mostly better. But Shepard was still comatose, sedation aiding the final healing of her body, if not her heart or mind.

“Goddess, I hope you understand, Shepard,” Liara said to the dark metal. “Or if you don’t, that you forgive me anyway.”

The stasis pod, of course, gave no response. That was the entire point of it. Its internal stasis fields repelled all radiation, any force, and even time itself. The stasis pod had carried Javik safely through the catastrophic fall of the Prothean empire and 50,000 years besides- through the end of one holocaust and the beginning of another. It would, surely, carry Shepard not nearly so long but ever so much further.

Liara could sense the launch technicians carrying out obscure but urgent tasks behind her as she stood silently at the center of the organized swarm of activity. She ignored them; nothing was launching without her approval, and Shepard’s ship was not launching without the most precious cargo stored in the stasis pod.

“Do you need another moment?” Miranda’s brisk tones emerged from the hatch of the small craft being prepared for launch. The human woman walked confidently across the tarmac to the stasis pod cradled by the large forklift. Everything from the spacecraft to the launch equipment was brand new, gleaming. The Shadow Broker had spared no expense. Neither had Miranda, who now controlled the remainder of the Illusive Man’s assets. Odd that he had never changed his will. Or that the Alliance had not seized control of those accounts.

Perhaps not so odd, Liara thought, as she gazed sidelong at Miranda. The other woman regarded the preparations with calm satisfaction, hands fisted on shapely hips. Miranda tended to get what she wanted, and she did have experience in securing Shepard when Shepard was what she wanted.

Realizing that Miranda was still awaiting a reply, Liara shook her head briefly.

“I said my goodbyes when we loaded her into the stasis fields. Now I am just . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“It really is the end,” Miranda supplied for her. “Not like before the relay. Or Earth, even. One-way trip by design.”

Liara nodded. She looked down again at the stasis pod. Life raft. Her fears made it the coffin it looked, and the ship a mere funeral cortege for an endless burial in a sea of stars.

Miranda spoke again. “I know there are no guaranties for where she’s going. But there are guaranties where she would stay. She deserves better. That’s why we’re doing this.”

Liara wasn’t sure whether Miranda was trying to calm Liara’s lingering doubts or her own. But the alternatives were worse.

Miranda abruptly leaned over to plant a kiss on the lid of the stasis pod, roughly where Shepard’s face would be, buried under layers of tech. Her red lipstick left a perfect print on the lid. She gave it a pat and straightened to regard it with a proud smile.

“Sweet dreams, Shepard. Sleep well. Remember me fondly. And live well, my friend.”

Miranda put a companionable hand on Liara’s shoulder, bumping her hip softly with her own shapely haunch. Liara would not have expected emotional support from the human, who had icily carved through all objections to this plan over the past months- objections logistical, legal, and moral alike. But she cared, Liara could see that now. There was no reason to spend as much political capital- not to mention actual money- in support of Liara’s mad plan as Miranda had if had she not cared deeply for Shepard. At this moment, Liara’s former jealousy of the woman who had briefly usurped Liara’s place at Shepard’s side was entirely forgotten and forgiven. She could not have done this alone.

And it was done. Liara’s breath left her in a shuddering sigh. She straightened her shoulders.

“I told you I’d write your name in the stars, Shepard,” she murmured. “I can’t wait to see what it spells.”

With that, she nodded to one of the techs waiting respectfully at the edges of the launch pad, and activity surrounded the forklift again.

She and Miranda stepped back to watch the stasis pod loaded seamlessly into the small, pilotless craft. All personnel stepped back to the edge of the pad, and some took the time to salute as the final checklists were resolved and put away.

Miranda did not wait for Liara’s permission this time as she typed the launch codes into her omni-tool. The spacecraft’s engines flared to life. It lifted off the ground noiselessly, picking up speed slowly as it quietly exited the audible zone of the launchpad, then turned on its boosters and moved more quickly as it flew towards the stars.

They both watched it until it blinked into FTL drive and disappeared, carrying Liara’s precious cargo to an unknown new life and new galaxy. Away from Liara. Away from Miranda. Away, also, from a shattered galaxy, ruined relays, billions of dead, unwanted responsibilities, undeserved burdens, and the Council’s final insult- criminal charges for war crimes allegedly committed in the course of saving literally everyone’s life in the entire galaxy. Well, Liara thought a pardon was warranted. Even outlaws could get exile, these days.

Goodbye, Shepard, she thought. Enjoy Andromeda.

* * *

The little craft, the Viking, had the very best VI captain that Miranda and Liara’s combined credits could purchase. It dutifully steered Shepard through dark space so quickly and well that Shepard arrived at the rendezvous point in the Andromeda Galaxy half a decade before the Hyperion. This was not a problem. This eventuality was well within the VI’s parameters. It would have been prepared to wait.

It was not prepared for the Scourge. So when the Viking, using its VI’s remaining functional subroutines, used its malfunctioning thrusters to redirect the ship away from the Scourge, and towards the closest detectable garden planet capable of sustaining human life outside the tainted cluster, it was really doing a very good job. Even at speeds much lower than lightspeed, the VI assessed that the Viking could make it to the garden planet with enough energy to spare to maintain the stasis fields supporting its sole inhabitant. This was, after all, its prime directive.

It left a message beacon behind to explain what it had done.

But the Hyperion was not expecting the small craft, and it was not missing a colonist with a familiar face and a false name. And anyway, it had its own problems to contend with.

So nobody missed her. Even the asari matriarch, now over seven hundred years old, was not surprised when her quantum entanglement device failed to alert on the appointed year and day. It was a long, long time past the arrangement of that certain date, by that point, and it was possible that Shepard had not understood or forgiven her.

Asari took the long view of such hurts, and were adept, as a species, at moving past losses that would cripple shorter lives. The matriarch had children and grandchildren of her own to concern herself with, by that time- Javik’s living legacy of the Protheans. The matriarch kept up Shepard’s legacy too. History had been kinder to Shepard than governments had prepared to be in the immediate aftermath of the war. A dead soldier’s villainy was more easily balanced with her heroics than a live one’s. The testimony of the crew of the Normandy, once it finally limped home, helped, as did the eventual restoration of the relays. But it was Liara’s history of the Reapers, published five years after Shepard’s presumed second and final death, that ultimately convinced the Milky Way that Shepard was the most consequential hero to have ever lived. The Council named a star after her. The Alliance named a dreadnought after her. The krogan named babies after her. The batarians named a non-procreative and frankly painful sex act after her. (They never did get over her blowing up their relay, not to mention Torfan).

But the supposed Evelyn Trevelyan, supposed colonist, supposed former Alliance soldier, never heard about any of it. She spent over ten thousand years plodding across space-time, only to crash into a mountain (the VI wasn’t very good at selecting landing spots) near the largest cluster of humanoids that the VI could detect. A VI couldn’t feel smug (such emotions having been excised from all Milky Way tech in a burst of red energy), but it supplied a little virtual check to its mission objective as it closed down navigational systems and began the process of reviving its sole crew with the last of its power. Mission accomplished. Shepard had been delivered safely to Andromeda. If the startled Templars nearby were less than impressed by its efforts in gently awakening Shepard, their appreciation was not part of its performance objectives.

Chapter Text

Shepard was surprised to wake up.

It said something about her last few years that “surprised to be alive” was not an unfamiliar feeling for her, nor was the sluggish awareness of pain in several extremities, lightheadedness, and piercing hunger.

The circumstances under which she woke up were, nonetheless, unusual. She was manacled, with what felt like real, old-fashioned, metal handcuffs. And the chafing at her wrists told her that this wasn’t some kind of fetish scenario. As her swollen eyelids cracked open, her first sight was what looked like an honest-to-God torch blazing on the wall. The mailed foot nudging her in the ribs wasn’t entirely new, but Shepard couldn’t recall being captured and tied up by humans before.

“…Evelyn?” said a brunette with an attractive slash down one cheek. “Evelyn Trevelyan!” She sounded like she had been shouting for a while.

Shepard coughed something that tasted disgusting out of her lungs and managed to lever herself into a sitting position. Her gaze was, of course, drawn immediately to the glowing light being emitted by her left palm, both because of the light, and because of the stabbing pain that accompanied the light. Was her omni-tool malfunctioning….? The brunette jabbed her again with her foot, less gently this time.

“Is your name Evelyn Trevelyan? Answer me!” The brunette drew the wickedly long blade at her side and pointed it at Shepard. The hooded figure standing in a corner, who Shepard had not immediately assessed (sloppy, Shepard, sloppy), immediately pushed the brunette away.

“We need her, Cassandra!”

While Cassandra’s armor did not register as entirely foreign to Shepard’s woozy gaze, the other woman was wearing some kind of chainmail dress and was carrying, of all things, a longbow. Shepard had the brief, hysterical thought that she might have wandered into some kind of LARPer festival on the Citadel.

But the Citadel was….

The thought vanished as soon as Shepard tried to grab onto it. The Citadel was what, exactly?

Shepard remembered instructing Joker to pick up Garrus and Vega, shooting out the shields of one last marauder, and then…? A light?

She was so out of it that she must have spoken part the thought aloud.

“Yes!” snarled the apparent Cassandra. “A big light! The entire Conclave is gone! How did you do it?”

The two women looked at Shepard, who licked her cracked lips. This didn’t make any sense, even to Shepard’s recently loosened standards of sense.

The star child had not mentioned a Conclave, and Shepard had carefully exhausted his (its?) conversation options in the hope of buying the Normandy extra time to get the hell out of Dodge. What exactly had she done with the kid…? She felt as though her perspective was veering in and out of her body.

Shepard ignored the humans for a moment to take another survey of her personal wellbeing. Her armor was gone. The gaping, bloody wound in her side that her armor’s healing array and medigel injectors were going to be unable to fix- also gone. When she shook her head, the red hair that would have brushed her shoulders when she charged the beam instead fell down the middle of her back. Obviously some time had passed. Shepard was missing time. She hated it when that happened.

Was this how indoctrination felt? She could have easily snapped the manacles with her biotics. Would she know if she were indoctrinated? She could throw both women out of range. Had any of the many mad, indoctrinated villains she had slain over the past three years ever questioned whether they were indoctrinated? Why was her omni-tool still malfunctioning?

As existential questions about the nature of her subjective reality were not likely to be resolved before Cassandra kicked her again, Shepard looked at her fist. The pulsing green light did not appear to be tied to any function of the omni-tool.

“Is that how you did it? What is the mark for?” the hooded woman asked.

Shepard realized that she hadn’t answered a single question that her captors had put to her.

“Why are you calling me…Evelyn?” She finally asked.

The two women regarded her with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

“It’s sewn on your clothes,” the hooded woman replied. “Once we got your armor off. It’s sewn on your chest. In old Tevene script. Are you from Tevinter?”

Shepard couldn’t imagine why she had another woman’s nametag on. She was also unfamiliar with the blue sigil sewn to her opposite chest pocket when she stared down at her chest. Ai? Lambda i? Shepard thought, in a flash of breakthrough hilarity, that perhaps she was just having a nightmare. She hoped this was a nightmare. She had a lot of nightmares. A nightmare implied that she was alive, still sane, and might wake up soon. It would be a pleasant change, indeed, to have a very ordinary kind of nightmare. In school, she had often had a dream that she was arriving for a final exam only to suddenly realize that she hadn’t attended class for the entire term and didn’t know any of the answers. This was just like that. She was in the middle of an undercover assignment, she’d been captured, and she hadn’t even read the mission briefing.

She didn’t like the other kind of nightmares.

“I…Evelyn, yes, you can call me Evelyn Trevelyan. What is going on? Why am I a prisoner?”

The women exchanged another angry glance, before Cassandra grabbed Shepard (she allowed herself to be grabbed, she had no idea what character she was supposed to be playing in this mission) and propelled her out of the dark, stony, and frankly smelly room to step into the cold outdoor light.

Cassandra’s supporting grip vanished at the same time Shepard’s hand gave another throb of pain, and Shepard fell back to her knees. Some kind of meteorological phenomenon churned in the near sky.

Shepard had seen a lot of skies. Red skies. Blue skies. Poisonous yellowish skies that spat fire to the ground. Swirling green skies that floated huge rocks in light, breathable atmosphere were new to Shepard. Green was wrong. She had been certain that green was the wrong answer. The little AI, or indoctrination hallucination, or whatever the kid had been, had been trying to steer her to the green. But she knew that green was the wrong color.

Shepard’s thoughts crawled like molasses. A distant, clinical voice in Shepard’s mind observed that she was suffering from an acute stress event and she should probably use some breathing exercises.

Shepard had never cared for breathing exercises when she had a sidearm and a cocktail of chemicals she could auto-inject via her armor. Facing shellshock unarmed and unarmored was unpleasant and new.

Also new was the apparent link between her omni-tool glitch and the swirling sky. If this was a local weather app, Shepard thought, it had some bugs to fix before it went alpha.

* * *

Everyone was LARPing. Everything Shepard could see was an apparent part of the set, from the buildings to the surrounding cast of extras, who were as dirty and surly as any pre-revolutionary Russian serf could have hoped to be. Cassandra briefly explained the scenario to the bemused Shepard, who had been freed from her manacles, but who had not yet been clued in to where they were, why Shepard was there, or why everyone was so committed to this game. Shivering in what felt like a poopie suit over thermal undergarments, Shepard was pulled along by Cassandra through very realistic ruins, and past a couple of brand new Reaper abominations.

Cassandra was giving some kind of exposition in her frankly attractive accent, but Shepard could not bring herself to do more than mumble agreeable responses. She could not seem to make her thoughts march in order and follow logical paths. She was accustomed to asking questions and exploring background facts until her conversational partner simply refused to comment further (Shepard lacked social skills, her fitreps had consistently found), but she couldn’t commit to it at the present.

Acute stress event. Likely shellshock, observed her inner clinician again, from a mental place several feet behind and above Shepard.

The cold ruins vomited forth a couple of husks, the first of which Cassandra easily dispatched by sticking it with her pointy pit of metal. That was just inefficient, and Shepard absently dispatched the next few with a wave of her biotics. If her brain was gelled and unresponsive, her implant seemed to be working just fine, at least.

Cassandra gave her a sidelong glance.

“A mage, then?”

Shepard almost giggled. It took a lot of dedication to the conceit of a medieval cataclysm to keep playing during a Reaper invasion.

But weren’t the Reapers….? The thought vanished again, along with whatever memory it was tied to, as Shepard attempted to focus on it. She tried to stop and crane her neck up at the sky. Nothing there but boulders and the green whirlpool.

Cassandra quickly and grimly hurried her on towards the hole in the sky.

The first rift pulled Shepard out of her partial reverie. If it was a hallucination, it was affecting all five senses. Indoctrinated scientists had reported auditory and visual hallucinations, but could they actually feel their delusions? Shepard could, when one socked her in the gut before Shepard could throw it down a cliff.

The husks appeared in beams of light spun out of the rift. Shepard swiveled her head in all directions but couldn’t find the dropship. For the first time, she wondered if she was actually already dead.

When Miranda had wanted to assess the likelihood of different factual scenarios, she would make a list and record the proof supporting and contradicting each hypothesis. Miranda was logical and organized. Shepard needed to be more like Miranda.

Yes. She needed to make a list. Shepard wished desperately for her datapad. She regarded her left arm, where her omni-tool would have provided a place for her to start her little chart. Seemed like a bad idea while the husks were still being farted out of the rift in the air. No, this would have to be a mental list.

These were the possibilities:

1. She was dead. Ash was right, and there was an afterlife. Ash was wrong, and Shepard’s bad choices in life had not been forgiven by a loving God. She was going to suffer in some kind of medieval torment for eternity.
2. She was indoctrinated. Everything she saw was just another manipulation by Harbinger which would end only with her gruesome demise and repurposing.
3. She was still on the Citadel, or perhaps Earth.
4. She was….somewhere else.

Options one and two were obviously more plausible than the LARPers and the monsters and the snowy medieval ruins being actually real, but were so depressing to contemplate that Shepard decided to just strike them from the list. After all, if she was so indoctrinated that she was unable to glimpse objective reality even around the fringes of her vision, it wasn’t as though sitting around and waiting to die was going to help her get better. No, she was just going to go with it until things started to make sense.

Going with it was Shepard’s preference, anyway. Lying down and dying would have been almost completely out of character.

Shepard reengaged in the battle. She hurled the two remaining husks into the mountainside and was accosted by a pointy-eared humanoid who made the day’s second grab for Shepard’s off-hand. “Before more,” he began to shout, but he did not finish his sentence.

Shepard’s reaction time had improved a bit since she had woken up, so she propelled him about twenty feet away with a biotic shove to his main center of gravity. Her aim was good, and he landed in a snow drift with a very gratifying puff of frost and grunt of exertion.

The humanoid gaped at her for a moment with slack-jawed astonishment, but recovered more quickly than Shepard would have expected. He pointed at the rift.

“Use the mark,” he yelled.

“What mark? How?” Shepard responded intelligently.

The pointy-eared man made a noise of frustration and cursed using words Shepard’s UT failed to translate.

A couple more husks popped out of the air. Shepard pulled them back up into the air again, then warped them into green piles of goo. She was going to need to start watching her six better if the enemies could come at her from holes in the sky, rather than being dropped off of overhead shuttles. Enemies everywhere, indeed.

The bald man with the ear deformities had wiped the snow off his natural fiber pajamas with muttered disgust and was stalking back towards Shepard. Shepard regarded him warily. He might have been crazy enough to go barefoot in the snow, but he moved like a man accustomed to combat, and Shepard had been injured by crazy people at close range more frequently than she’d been shot at by sane ones.
“If you’ll allow me?” he asked curtly, reaching again for her wrist.

Shepard nodded cautiously, and this time the humanoid slowly and more gently encircled her hand with his. He lifted it towards the rift, and Shepard’s hand commenced some sort of energetic reaction with the rift. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, and while Shepard felt some kind of energy drain, it wasn’t the feeling of muscular fatigue that she normally associated with the use of her biotics.

The rift in the air abruptly vanished, as did the energy link.

The humanoid looked noticeably more smug at that than he had since Shepard had thrown him into the snow.

Shepard noticed his companion for the first time- a man suffering from some form of achondroplasia. That took option three right off the table. The man was healthy, aside from a bit of facial scarring, and he looked alert and well-nourished. No child with such an easily correctable genetic disorder had been born on Earth in decades. The Alliance’s laws held that s child’s right to medical treatment outweighed a parent’s religious or philosophical objections to gene therapy. Only outside of Alliance space would a human colony allow a child to grow to adulthood with his dwarfism untreated.

Plus, his crossbow would never have been allowed at a LARPer tournament. Too anachronistic for the medieval-meets-Tolkien theme everyone else had going on.

Option four was currently winning. Shepard had seen only humans since waking up, however they might have modified their auditory appendages, and she had heard of human colonies hidden in the Traverse where the organizers flouted Alliance gene therapy and human rights laws to build their own weird little kingdoms along the lines of their favorite delusions. Shades of Major Kyle, if he’d had time to settle down and raise a few generations in his own vision.

Was she on a mission to neutralize these weirdos, or help them? She couldn’t remember being sent on a mission at all. She decided that she could obviously kill them all later, since the crossbow was the most sophisticated weapon she had seen yet (most of the weapons being of the simply pointy variety), but she couldn’t un-kill these people if her mission was actually to save them from the green atmospheric phenomenon. The GAP, Shepard decided she would call it. And she was going to save these humans from the GAP. Then review her omni-tool in privacy, once she was done, to find out if she had a mission briefing stashed away in its memory. And then kill everyone she’d met thus far, if necessary.

“I am Solas,” the pointy-eared man was saying. “If there are to be introduction.”

Chapter Text

Mistakes had been made. By Solas, among others. Unfortunately, that had been his conclusion at every new turn in this miscarriage of a world. Yesterday morning, he’d been sipping what passed for cider in a tavern that could have, he supposed, been dirtier, and been pleasantly awaiting the incineration of a Tevinter slave lord and the return of the bulk of his power.

Today, he was kneeling uncomfortably in a dungeon, completely at a loss to explain the condition of the Seeker’s unconscious prisoner, and running dangerously out of soothing bullshit to draw the Seeker off of his failure to produce answers.

New experiences were rare and precious as jewels to Solas, after so many years of life, but that that moment, he could have done entirely without them in preference for the actual consummation of his plans as expected. Not that that would have been a routine experience.

Healing had never been one of Solas’ skills. He had, in fact, focused his study on the exact opposite of healing. However, in his expertise in large-scale disaster, he had felt himself qualified to understand most of the inner workings of the body and its relationship to the fundamental forces of the world.

Here, however, all of his understanding failed him. The human so-called healer Adan, little better than a bush shaman rattling beads, was doing more to keep the prisoner alive than Solas was. Adan, at least, was competently dripping honey-water and elfroot tonic down the prisoner’s throat, charting her breathing and pulse, and changing her small clothes. Solas had intercepted him when he had suggested a course of leeches, though.

Other than preventing an unnecessary leeching, Solas was merely running the same tests again and again, because he could not believe what his magical senses were telling him.

She looked strange enough to naked eyes alone. She was small in stature, although her limbs were nearly as lanky as one of the People’s. It was as though a person had simply been reproduced in 80:100 proportion.

Her features were doll-like and even, as perfect as her teeth. Her skin was pale, as though she spent a great deal of time inside. A noble, then. And yet she was more muscular than any soldier he’d ever met- not showy muscles, like a gladiator might display, but muscles all over her body in places a fighter would use. She had callouses on her hands too, though not in places any weapon or tool he was familiar with might leave them. And yet the callouses were peeling, as though it had been some weeks since she had used them. A retired soldier, then. And yet she had been dropped out of a rift completely unarmed, and wearing clothing that seemed ill-suited to combat. It was foreign, yet cut for a laborer or engineer, with a range of movement and many empty pockets and loops. He couldn’t believe her to be a worker. Perhaps a very incompetent spy.

The clothing itself was puzzling. It was made of textiles he had never seen either before or after his long sleep. If it was woven, the weave was so tight he could not see the individual fibers. Nonetheless, it vented both air and moisture when he tested it. It was impervious to flame. It smelled funny.

The right breast-pocket had a blue sigil on it, one apparently unknown to the Chantry spymaster.

The left breast-pocket was embroidered with writing. Two words. The symbols were almost, but not quite, congruent with ancient Tevene. If he were to guess, applying a one-to-one transcription with what he supposed was the corresponding Tevene glyph, it would spell “Evelyn Trevelyan.” That much, he was able to tell the spymaster.

“So you believe she is Tevinter, then?” Leliana asked him.

Solas frowned. “I said the name is written in something resembling ancient Tevene script. Nobody has used that in nearly three thousand years. The name itself is not Tevene. Her features are not necessarily Tevinter, although the slave trade has made that determination inconstant. And lastly, would a Tevinter…”

“Just write their name on their chest to tell the world about it?” Leliana interrupted him. “Yes, I wondered about that as well. Though it is possible that she did not intend to survive the explosion intact, I cannot imagine anyone like her simply strolling the Conclave without question.”

Leliana instructed him to continue his examination and to attempt to wake the prisoner, and left him alone with her again.

There were things he had noticed about the prisoner that he had not told Leliana.

Her hair color for one. That shiny, glossy dark red had been common in Elvhenan, and still appeared occasionally among elves. He had yet to see a human sport it.

Her eyes were a normal enough dark brown, when he pushed back a lid on one with his thumb to check, but larger than a human’s would be, if not so large as one of the People’s. But when he lifted a candle to check the contraction of her pupils, her retinas reflected the light like rubies. That was not possible for either a human or an elf.

Finally, she was covered in….cracks. He would have called them scars, but he doubted a human’s eyes would have been able to detect the lines that spider-webbed across the prisoner’s body. They covered every inch of her form from head to toe. He had had Adan remove her clothing so that he could check. Other than the faint, thin, lines, she was entirely unblemished. It was as though someone had cracked her like a hardboiled egg, and then flawlessly pieced her back together. It was marvelously frustrating that Solas had no idea how it could have been accomplished.

And within! He could feel his magic in the mark, though he could concoct no method of removing it either safely or unsafely from her palm. He could feel some other magic inside her, stored in tiny nodules along her nervous system. But this was not how human mages felt! Human mages felt just like ordinary humans, unless they were actively connecting to the Fade, and then their connection to the fade lit up directly behind their eyes. It felt like this human was knotted with connections to the Fade which vibrated at all times, although she was performing no magic that he could detect.

Finally, and most astonishingly, she was plumbed through with some kind of machinery that defied any understanding. He could not begin to conceive of how it had been engrafted in her body without killing her, nor what purpose it served. It was so complex that he imagined himself a barbarian child adrift in the halls of Arthalan by comparison to the people who had created it. He knew that the Children of the Stone had produced many marvels, but the tiny, sparkling devices that girded her bones made their greatest wonders look like hand-hewn chips of granite. June would have wept tears of blood to see the mere struts of unknown metal reinforcing her metatarsal bones. Then spilled buckets of it in an attempt at replication. The thought made him frown.

He had thought that there was no new thing under the sun for him to see or learn, and he did not know whether to welcome or reject the wonders he beheld.

“Where did you come from, Evelyn Trevelyan? What are you?” he asked the prisoner softly. She continued to slumber in slack repose, and he decided he would keep her alive long enough to find out.

* * *
 
Soldiers were soldiers, wherever she went, and politicians were politicians. Even if these soldiers were armed with nothing more deadly than sharp shards of metal, Shepard felt heartened to see the familiar exertions of preparation, battle, and recovery in action. She was less excited to see that bureaucrats were gumming up the works here too.

The hooded woman, Leliana, was arguing with a plump fellow in garish robes as Shepard approached, trailed by Cassandra, Varric, and Solas. Apparently Shepard was suspected of various dastardly crimes, and was due to be taken to some other town for trial, followed by execution.

Bigger men have tried, buddy, Shepard thought.

Cassandra and Leliana disagreed, but they weren’t making any progress in changing the bureaucrat’s mind. Luckily, Shepard had a tried and tested method of cutting through red tape.

Lunging forward, she slammed both fists down on the desk hard enough to make the bureaucrat’s papers bounce into the air. Shepard leaned forward menacingly and pointed at the GAP.

“You’re here because you want that thing in the sky closed, right?” She yelled directly into the clerk’s face. “Well, I seem to the one woman who can deal with that. You want me dead? You can get in line with everyone else in the galaxy- after I take care of your mess for you.” She pounded her fist on the table again for good measure.

The bureaucrat looked like he was going to swallow his tongue. Shepard shoved a few of the papers off the table for emphasis, then pushed back from the table.

“Now, someone needs to get me a sitrep. What are my resources? How many hostiles between me and the GAP? Does anyone have a decent map of the terrain?

There were a few seconds of stunned silence, so Shepard swiveled at her hips to look back at her team. When had she started thinking of them as her team?

Leliana had her arms crossed and looked inscrutable. Cassandra looked pleased. Solas was covering a small smirk with a cough into his fist. And Varric was openly grinning in appreciation.

Leliana and Cassandra stepped forward to present tactical choices, and Shepard noted that Cassandra, at least, seemed to have a decent soldier’s grasp of the situation. One choice offered uncertain terrain and MIA scouts in exchange for fewer known hostiles. The other involved a standard military charge at the bulk of the Reaper forces.

“I’m taking the path,” said the SPECTRE. Cassandra was displeased, apparently concerned that Shepard was placing the wellbeing of the scouts over the success of the mission. Shepard shook her head.

“Those scouts will have to look after themselves,” said Shepard. “But you can’t defeat Reapers using conventional forces or tactics. It’s better if I take a small team through the mountains to the objective and avoid getting dug into large-scale fighting. I’ll take Varric and Solas. You wait here.”

Well, Cassandra really didn’t like that idea. Varric could snipe at range, and would be relatively safe if he would put some protective gear on to cover the luxuriant pelt of chest hair growing directly above vital organs he would definitely miss if they were punctured. Solas had some kind of biotic defensive capability that Shepard had yet to analyze, as well as a better understanding of the GAP than Shepard did. Cassandra had a pointy piece of metal and a loud voice. Shepard would be happier leaving her at HQ, and Cassandra would be safer.

Plus, her fire team had always been limited to three people.

She wished Thane and Miranda were there.

* * *

Their red-headed savior had scavenged a few odds and ends of armor to cover her sack-like apparel, including, of all things, a Templar helmet. She would have looked ridiculous, if she weren’t so terrifying. Varric had been sized up by a number of truly scary women in his life, ranging from Meredith Stannard to unpronounceable demonesses. Almost all of them had looked no further than his chest hair and diminutive size before turning their attention to greater threats. As they were supposed to do. Varric got the feeling that the redhead was more impressed by his combat abilities than deterred by his carefully-styled-as-harmless exterior. And he also got the feeling that the reward for her approval was being placed upon some internal “to kill” list she had running in her head. If it wouldn’t run contrary to every value he held dear, he would have missed a few shots with Bianca on purpose.

“So, dollface…” he began, because, Maker’s balls, what else could he do in high-tension situations other than ask intrusive questions and apply irritating nicknames, but she cut him off.

“Dollface? That’s what you’re going with?” She asked. He wished he could read her expression as she swiveled back to look at him, but the helmet concealed her face.

“You saw me tear down an entire pack of husks with my mind and you get ‘dollface’ from that?”

Varric hoped that wasn’t irritation in her tone. It was hard to tell, over her accent, which neither he nor Leliana has been able to place. Squished by their Maker-sent rescuer for making a bad joke would make a poor end to his story, he thought. Dollface was the name of a Carta gangster’s moll he’d known back in Cumberland. At least everyone had thought she was just the gangster’s girlfriend. Most people were lucky enough to never learn that she also handled torture and executions for her boyfriend, and did it with a perfect smile on her face. Varric had had an uncomfortable crush on her.

“Yeah, about that,” said Varric. “My initial thought was we’d call you ‘Killer’ but I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about that, and honestly you scare the piss out of me.”

That startled a bark of laughter out of Solas, and after a moment, the redhead chuckled too. Cassandra made a disgusted noise. (Of course Cassandra had insisted on accompanying them, looking appalled when the redhead had slowly explained that she would be unable to protect Cassandra if the fighting grew too intense).

Varric cleared his throat to continue.

“I had to call you something when I commenced the delicate investigation of how exactly you came to be here, pulling our bacon out of the hellscape. So, dollface, what brings a pretty girl like you to a place like this?” If his throat nearly closed up and squeaked out the end of that question, Andraste could forgive her most humble dwarf for having a hard time making light of this situation.

“I’ve been called worse,” she admitted.

Maybe he’d live through this conversation.

Her name, according to Solas, was Evelyn Trevelyan, but Varric would have bet diamonds to deepstalkers that that wasn’t what her mother had called her. She had twitched when Cassandra had addressed her as ‘Evelyn’ while they trotted up the mountain path.

The redhead was slowing down, hesitating. They were almost to the sheer cliffs below the Temple, and only shaky ladders lay between them and another demon-infested ruin.

She turned to look at the three members of her ”fire team.”

“This isn’t an….Alliance colony, I’ve gathered,” she said.

She drew three blank faces. She’d been extremely vague when fending off Varric and Solas’ initial inquiries. Varric had already started mentally crafting a quasi-religious tale that cast her as a bodily reborn Andraste, confused by the continued degradation of the world she’d died to save. He was relatively pleased with it- anything religious in nature sold very well, especially it was blasphemous. And her quiet confirmation with Cassandra that the local authority was known as the “Chantry,” would certainly be blasphemous.

“So, if this isn’t an Alliance colony, it doesn’t seem as though you have contact with any other human systems? Outside the ‘Chantry?’” She pressed.

“If you don’t count Tevinter. Or the Avvar, I suppose,” said Cassandra.

The redhead took a deep breath. She was steeling herself for some big admission.

“Alright, then I guess I can tell you that my real name is Jane Shepard,” she said.

There was a beat. She was waiting for a reaction. Waiting. Waiting.

All three of them then spoke at once.

“That’s it?” said Varric. “Your big secret?”

“Shepherd? Like sheep?” said Cassandra.

“What did you mean by human systems?” said Solas.

Shepard laughed again and shook her head.

“That will teach me,” she said, apropos of nothing, to Varric’s mind. “Yes, my name is Shepard. I don’t actually have any idea how I got here. I certainly wasn’t trying to. I don’t know where I am, who you people are, how the GAP got into your sky, or why my omni-tool is reacting with your atmospheric anomalies.”

They all digested that for a moment.

“If I may attempt to sum this up…Shepard,” said Solas. She nodded. Solas straightened his shoulders and clasped his hands behind his back to assume what Varric would call his “professorial” stance.

“You are not from any country under the Chant,” he said. She nodded.

“You remember your past, but you do not remember how you came to Haven,” he continued. She nodded.

“You do not recall encountering a rift before, let alone emerging from one,” he said. She nodded again.

“But you clearly have much experience fighting demons,” he concluded. She hesitated a bit longer, but finally nodded.

“Lots of Reapers. Not exactly like these, but close,” she clarified. “I’m a soldier.”

Solas thought about that for a bit. All eyes were fixed to his face as he contemplated Shepard’s answers.

“Fascinating,” he finally said, in tones of deep pleasure.

Cassandra looked like she could strangle him with her bare hands. She made another disgusted noise.

He looked at her in minor reproof.

“I was merely summarizing what we know. It is far too early to draw conclusions regarding the provenance of your guest.”

Shepard cleared her throat as she gestured towards the cliffs.

“Eyes on the objective, team. We can figure out what the hell I’m doing here later,” she said, before scampering up multiple levels of ladders as though she did so every day.

Cassandra followed nearly as quickly, with the air of a woman who was determined not to be left behind. Even Solas adroitly followed, with his agility belying the age his bald head would ascribe him.

Varric, by contrast, was getting too old for this shit.

He was breathing rather hard before he reached the ruined mines at the top. Hawke would have told him to lay off the ale and start joining her for her early-morning bandit-elimination jaunts down the Wounded Coast. Mental Hawke could sit on it, Varric decided.

Shepard had removed her purloined Templar helmet and was inspecting the walls of the mines with consternation.

“You said these are abandoned mines?” she asked Cassandra.

“Yes, likely dating to the Exalted Age, prior to the Fourth Blight,” the Seeker replied. “So more than 400 years old.”

The last part of the Seeker’s pronouncement caused Shepard’s head to jerk back in surprise.

“That’s impossible,” said Shepard with flat conviction. “Humans have barely been outside of the solar system for 40 years. Who built the mines?”

“Definitely humans,” said Varric. “Dwarves wouldn’t have left a bunch of un-drained bell pits around for anyone to stumble into, and you don’t think of elves as building anything this depressing.”

Solas nodded in assent.

“At least not by accident,” he added. “Tell me, Shepard, what is your ‘solar system?’ Are your people very isolated?”

“’My people’ are familiar with the known world, except perhaps this particular slice of BFE,” Shepard retorted. “What year do you think this is?”

“41 Dragon, of course!” responded Cassandra with surprise. “What year did you think this was?”

“2186,” Shepard responded in a subdued voice. “Or maybe ’87. I know I’m missing some time. I think we need to synchronize our calendars. Your ’40 Dragon’- that’s 40 years from what?”

Her question didn’t make any sense, so Solas answered, no doubt because the man apparently couldn’t pass up an opportunity to demonstrate his boundless expertise in just about everything.

“40 years since the beginning of the Dragon Age. Two thousand thirty-five years since the founding of the first human regime- the Tevinter Empire. And more than eight thousand years since the beginning of recorded history with the founding of Arlathan by my people.”

Shepard had her eyes closed and was shaking her head, muttering to herself. She crossed her arms and opened her eyes to look intently at the floor. She said something that sounded like “…convergent evolution?” But Varric couldn’t make any sense out of it.

She pinned Solas with her gaze.

“I apologize if this is an intrusive question, Solas,” she said. “But are we all the same species here?”

His eyebrows wrinkled his broad forehead.

“Species? You mean human?” He asked in surprise.

“Right, I know you wouldn’t be the first person to explore this ‘elf’ phenotype, legal or illegal, but I’m frankly having to question whether I’m overlooking some kind of astonishing coincidence in design.” She took a deep breath. “You’ve seen me with my clothes off, right? While I was unconscious? So do we have the same parts?”

Solas chuckled, though it sounded tight.

“That has never been the problem between my people and yours. I confess that I do not understand many things about you, but you had no ‘parts’ I had not seen before.”

Shepard placed the tips of her thumb and forefinger against her eyebrows, in what seemed to be a familiar gesture of consternation.

“I may have been out a long time this time,” she said quietly. “A really long time.”

* * *

Shepard was subdued for the remainder of their trek to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Cassandra expressed hope that Shepard would find some answers for herself, as well as Cassandra, but Shepard did not respond. She continued to dispatch demons with barely a flick of her fingers, leaving the rest of them with little to do until they reached the crater.

If Varric had never seen red lyrium again in his life, it would have been too soon. Great red glowing veins of it pushed through the Temple floor, as thick as any lyrium veins he and Hawke had seen in the depths of the unmapped primeval thaigs.

He had the urge to grab the other members of the party and tell them to run in the opposite direction, but he had the feeling that would only result in his immediate expulsion from the group by Cassandra, not to mention Shepard. Luckily, Shepard nodded briskly when he explained the effects of red lyrium on innocent and not-so-innocent bystanders. Cassandra chimed in with a brief recital of Meredith’s fate.

He didn’t tell her about Bartrand. He didn’t tell anyone about Bartrand. He was pretty sure that even the ancient dwarven matrons he paid to wipe his brother’s orifices and mind the sharp knives didn’t tell anyone about Bartrand.

“I’ve seen similar artifacts,” Shepard noted. “We must all guard against indoctrination. The effects I saw seemed to worsen with both temporal and physical proximity, so let’s move in doubletime and get out as quickly as possible. Agreed?”

She barely waited for their agreement before sprinting towards the base of the crater, Cassandra stumbling after her in haste.

They both halted when the voices started playing.

“Everyone else hears that too, right?” Shepard shakily.

Varric was going to have to follow up on that thought later, but he heard it. Best Varric could discern, some creepy blood mage had been mixing it up with the Divine when Shepard blundered into it, which just about completed the list of things he absolutely did miss about Kirkwall.

Shepard didn’t seem inclined to wait to hear how the scene played out, and charged straight at the breach, yelling about “batarian-yahg hybrids,” whatever those were. The woman was headed straight for an ass-kicking by a Pride demon bigger than most taverns, but the madwoman almost looked like she was enjoying herself as she tossed great balls of blue energy at its face.

Welcome to Thedas, Shepard, he thought, as he unholstered Bianca and prepared to charge the Breach. Come for the demons. Stay for the blood magic and red lyrium. If you’re good, we’ll let you put our entire religious system back together. Has anyone offered you tea yet?

Chapter Text

When Shepard regained consciousness, she could hear the ocean.

Her body was pleasantly free of pain for the moment and when she wriggled her arms, she could feel soft sand below her. Her eyes blinked slowly open against the bright sun on her face.

She pulled herself into a sitting position and brushed the sand off of her armor. Hahne-Kedar. Her favorite.   Glossy black, as perfect as the day she’d bought it off that scuzzy Salarian down in the wards. The beach was pristine and nearly unpopulated.

A short distance away, Solas was wading in the lagging waves, examining a scuttling rock-crab equivalent. He was still attired in pajamas, but he’d lost the vest and had his sleeves and trousers rolled up in the heat. He turned and gave her a small smile.

“Shepard. This is a pleasant spot to meet. Is this your homeland?”

Shepard glanced around, her sense of wellbeing fading. Storm clouds on the horizon crackled in silent lightning.   Behind the line of tropical trees edging the beach, Shepard could just make out a jutting concrete structure. That structure was long gone, blown to oblivion, along with everything Shepard could see, and the bodies of the two friends she’d killed that day. Not a pleasant spot at all.

“Virmire,” Shepard said grimly. “Home to nobody. Why are we here, Solas?”

Solas stepped out of the ocean, daintily shaking the water from his bare feet. He padded towards her across the sand. His feet did not leave footprints behind him.

“This was your choice, at some level,” he said. “This is the Fade. You are dreaming. I thought that perhaps we might discuss a few matters before you awoke.”

Shepard looked around herself again. She’d had much worse dreams recently. The lightning of Virmire was nothing compared to the voices of her fallen friends accusing her. She would have thought that the dead would stay where they’d fallen. But hell was empty, and all the devils were with her in her head.

“Are we dead too, Solas?” she asked solemnly. She knew that the giant yahg(?) with the eyes of a batarian terrorist was dead, but she could not recall whether she had successfully closed the GAP after commencing the energy feedback loop. It had been a tricky fight, as bad as that Reaper on Rannoch. She’d been the only one able to keep up any kind of an offense, with everyone else focused on staying out of the reach of the giant light whip the yahg-thing had wielded.

Solas cocked his head at her.

“I saw you safely left to rest in a cabin back in Haven. I imagine you shall awaken shortly. But do you often converse with the dead in your sleep?”

“They’re not great conversationalists, no,” said Shepard. “But I lost two of them right here on this planet. If there’s a hell, this place would be where I’d start looking for the entrance.”

Solas looked around again, with less certainty.

“Then I apologize for my choice of venue. The only location I knew to be familiar to you was the Haven dungeon, and a place suggested by your mind seemed the better option.”

Shepard waved him off and levered herself to her feet.

“As good a place to talk to someone in my dreams as any. What did you need to ask?”

Solas turned his back on her to look again at the encroaching storm clouds. They were dark purple, and the lightning crackled in blue and white.

“Cassandra believes that you are sent by Andraste, or perhaps her Maker directly, to aid them in their fight against the Breach and whoever slew the Divine. The view is beginning to spread beyond those who saw you fall out of the Breach at the Temple.”

Shepard processed that.

“But I have heard you say that you have come through time, and perhaps a long distance as well,” Solas continued.

He padded closer, until he could look her directly in the face. He did look very human. His features were regular, even handsome, and that spray of freckles was charming. Even his shaven head suited him

“I would not presume to demand answers from you, as that is not my place in this, but I would ask you to consider what you will tell the larger world about how you came to fall out of a rift to save us all,” he told her in that melodic voice.

“I’ll just tell them the truth- I have no fricking idea,” said Shepard.

Solas’ pale eyes searched her face. “Sometimes what you don’t tell someone has as much impact as what you do. More, perhaps.”

The man was clearly getting at something, but Shepard was not a subtle woman, and she failed to appreciate subtlety in others. She balled her fists in frustration.

“I’m just a dumb soldier, Solas, so I’d appreciate a little straight talk here. If you’re a hallucination, it would be helpful if you’d just admit it. If not, I’ll happily consider any advice you have for me.”

Solas gave her a sad smile.

“It seems that you bear some doubts, sleeping and waking, as to the reality of your perceptions. While that is a most intelligent strategy in the Fade, I must question why you chose to help us at all with the rifts, and why you would do so going forward. If this is not your world, why would you risk even your attention for its inhabitants when you could be seeking to return to your own?”

Shepard gave that question the thought it deserved. She paced a bit through the sand that her boots could not disturb. She could smell the brine in her air and the ozone of the approaching storm. The wind whistled along her open faceplate. She could hear it shake the fronds of the palm-tree-equivalents. It felt as real as anything she had experienced in the run to the GAP, but Solas freely admitted it was a dream.   A dream she could still affect with her choices of what to say, and what secrets she could hold back. So she quoted Isak Dinesen at him, since Ash would have liked that, here.

“Few people can say they are free of the belief that this world which they see around them is in reality the work of their own imagination. Are we pleased with it, proud of it, then?”

Those words clearly hit Solas hard, and he gave the rejoinder the respect it deserved, nodding his head in agreement Shepard crossed her arms across her armored chest.

“I’ve seen a lot of things over the past few years that were hard to believe. A lot of people didn’t believe me about things that I knew were absolutely true. So I’ve had to keep an open mind. I’m keeping an open mind about this, Solas.   But if you’re asking what to expect from me, I’m just going to have to keep doing what I’ve been doing, which is the best I can. I had my mission, and it was a big enough one for any number of lives.”

“The demons?” he asked. “Your…Reapers?”

“You say that so dismissively,” she said with a wry twist. “You have a few of them here, plus one ruined church. I saw them take entire worlds. It’s an entirely different scale. I’m not saying the GAP isn’t a problem, but I’m worried about it mostly because there weren’t supposed to be any of them left. I thought we….I thought I had destroyed them all permanently.”

“Shepard,” Solas cut her off, “there have always been demons. They were known in ancient Arlathan. Thinking that one person could completely erase the darker side of our connection to the Fade is hubris. Regardless of your connection to the events that created the Breach, you can hardly be blamed for the existence of demons.”

“Solas, that was a lot of words that didn’t make any sense put together,” said Shepard, shaking her head. “I was born in a world that didn’t believe in Reapers. When we discovered their existence, I made it my mission to warn the galaxy. When they didn’t believe me, I made it my mission to stop their arrival. When they came anyway, I made it my mission to destroy them all. So what I need to know now, is did I fail? I mean, you’re all here, alive and….well, living in pre-spaceflight filth, but we’ll work on that. But if it’s been as long as I think it has, it should mean that I won.   That we won.” She frowned. “If that makes any sense.”

“It does not seem that this discussion will lead anywhere productive today,” Solas said smoothly. “I came here to discern your intent, and it appears that your intent is to investigate the source of the demons and your arrival through the rift. Your aims are fully congruent with my own. Allow me to offer you my services, then,” he said with a little half-bow.

“Famous last words,” said Shepard wryly. “You don’t even know what I’ll ask you to do, yet.”

She could have sworn that the tips of his pointed ears turned a little pink, but she’d met too many aliens to allow herself to draw any conclusions as to what that meant.

“I can hardly wait to find out,” he murmured, in a tone as dry as toast.

Shepard gave a last look at the horizon. The storm was almost upon them, whipping the trees and sending forked bolts of lightning into the roiling sea.

“Hey Solas?” she asked, as he regarded her intently. “Don’t bring me back to Virmire ever again.”

* * * 

“Nope, absolutely not,” said Shepard, emphatically. “Becoming a religious figure in a messianic cult is a hard limit for me.”

As Solas had warned her, Leliana and Cassandra, along with the fanciest diplomat and prettiest ‘commander’ she’d ever met, were waiting to ambush her with their plans for her apotheosis when she woke up.

They were desperate, it was clear. While Josephine appeared more than competent in her diplomatic role, and Leliana was a red-haired, dead-eyed version of Liara as Shadow Broker, Cassandra and Cullen were obviously in over their heads. As best Shepard could determine, Cullen had been XO of a battalion of Templars- an armed religious order tasked with law enforcement over biotics. Cassandra was an attaché to the recently deceased head of their religion on leave from some sort of internal affairs department over the Templars. None of them had ever served in any conventional military, and they were ready to imprint on Shepard like ducklings on the first officer they met.

Joker would like that metaphor, Shepard thought.

“I have a lot of problems with this, starting with the name,” Shepard explained. “The best you could come up with is ‘Inquisition?” You think we’re going to win a bunch of hearts and minds while called ‘the Inquisition?’”

“Recent history has not supported the use of a light touch, Trevelyan,” said Leliana. Shepard winced at the name.

“I told you that’s not my name,” she muttered.

“Evelyn Trevelyan sounds respectable,” said Leliana patiently. “Jane Shepard sounds like a pseudonym.”

That was true enough- it almost was.

“People will say that Andraste brought you to us in our hour of need whether you agree with the story or not,” Leliana continued. “All we can do is shape our response, and thereby the narrative.”

Shepard considered that for a few moments. She was pretty sure the Alliance would frown on her for encouraging any kind of religious cult of Shepard. But if there was a manual for interacting with a pre-spaceflight civilization- beyond DON’T- Shepard had zoned out that day in OCS. Without any kind of guidance, she was going to have to fall back on just plain getting it done.

“Alright,” she said, clearing her throat. “If you want to put me in charge and worship me or whatever…”

Cullen and Josephine leaned forward in anticipation. Leliana smirked in triumph.

“You’re not in charge!” Cassandra snapped. She was roundly ignored.

“I’m going to have some ground rules.”

Leliana and Cassandra shared a long look and nodded.

“I’m not going to pretend that my biotics, or magic, or whatever you’re going to call it, are miraculous. It’s just science.”

“…So your science can explain the Breach, then?” Leliana broke in smoothly.

She had her there.

“Ok, no, maybe not that. But everything else.” Shepard insisted. “Second of all, we’re going to figure out how I got here, and what happened to the rest of the Alliance.”

“Of course we are looking into that,” said Cassandra in her pleasant, throaty accent. “All of our forces not needed for peacekeeping and security are scouting the area around the Breach. Determining the circumstances behind the Divine’s murder and the creation of the Breach are second in priority only to resolving the Breach itself. That will surely establish how you came to fall from the rift as well.”

“And we will of course report anything we can determine to the War Council,” said Leliana, smoothly.

Shepard strongly doubted that. Leliana looked like a woman who would incubate secrets like a broody hen on her last egg.   But better Leliana found the remains of the Crucible, or the Normandy, or however Shepard had gotten here, than some illiterate serf who would turn a bulkhead into a cowshed and go sterile from eezo-poisoning.

“And last of all, we’re going to try to act like reasonable human colonists, ok? Earthlings? I’m not crazy about the whole ‘Inquisition’ name, and I know there aren’t a lot of pleasant ways to go about Reaper-slaying, but let’s try to keep the collateral damage to a minimum. I’ve seen a little of how you guys are living, and let’s say I am far from impressed. Your legacy is the fucking stars, people, and you’re shitting in buckets on a perfectly good garden world. Can we try to get our acts together and start trying to live like a Council species? Stop oppressing each other over the shape of our ears and focus on building our way out of the twelfth century, ok?”

It was pretty far from a good speech, and she was sure most of it had gone straight over their pointy little heads. But even Cassandra looked impressed and Cullen was straight-up leaning over the war table towards her with glassy eyes and the blank stare of the true believer. Ok, maybe that was his hangover, or whatever chemical he was using to make his eyes look like pissholes in the snow. But she had a sense for when she crowd in her pocket, and this crew seemed easily persuaded.

You talked an indoctrinated Spectre into blowing the top of his head off with his Carnifex, she reminded herself. This group wanted to be led. They clearly wanted some kind of demonslayer-come-Joan of Arc to lead them in a crusade to reestablish order in their religious autocracy, but that wasn’t the way Shepard felt like heading. If she needed to play hero to kick-start the long climb back towards the Enlightenment, that was an end worthy of the means.

And if the few Reapers she’d had to squish at the Temple were the worst this world could throw at her, this would be almost like retirement.

* * * 

From the doorway of the Chantry, Shepard fisted her hands on her hips and surveyed her kingdom. She knew she cut a pretty picture framed by the darkness, especially now that she’d found some shiny white armor to replace her coveralls. She knew her people needed a chance to get a good look at her, and she needed a chance to look at them.

Men and women alike performed tasks both martial and industrial. It seemed the patriarchy had not been reestablished on Thedas.   That was good.

But the elf-phenotypes were being ordered around by the more standard phenotypes. That was bad.   She’d have to make some kind of holy pronouncement about that.

Most pressingly, she didn’t see any kind of sanitation, medical, or mess facilities. If her army couldn’t shit, heal, or eat, they certainly weren’t going to be killing many Reapers even if they were armed with the best pointy things medieval technology could provide.

Which brought Shepard to her current problem. She knew that they would need to build some latrines, a hospital, and a mess hall, but if any of her marines had ever asked her how such a thing would be accomplished, she would have snapped at them to read the fucking manual and stop wasting her oxygen.

She needed the manuals.

She glanced down at her left wrist. The mark on her palm was still roiling, but no longer painful. Shepard hadn’t activated her omni-tool since she had awakened in Leliana’s dungeon. She’d like to give it a try, but it would be awfully embarrassing if she accidentally opened another hole in the sky while firing it up.

So she went in search of her hole in the sky expert.

Solas had secured a pretty nice log cabin at the edge of the camp, and was watching the GAP while writing in a little notebook. Shepard was going to be interested to hear how he’d procured better quarters than their holy figure, since someone was storing live birds and moldy fishing nets in her cabin. She’d come pretty far down in the world from the Normandy’s cushy king-sized bed.

Solas nodded companionably when Shepard approached. They hadn’t talked since their chat in dream-Virmire, but Shepard wasn’t sure if that was the kind of thing the people here did on the regular, so she played it cool. She was surprised to notice that she had to look several inches up to talk to him. She was accustomed to being tall, and in her dream they had spoken eye to eye. She came to the uncomfortable realization that she might be short for this world. Low gravity meant rocks could float and everyone grew out and up.

“I’d like to turn on my omni-tool, but I don’t want to blow anything up if it’s interacting with the mark. Can you help?”

Solas face broke into an unguarded smile, which was a good look on him.

“I’m flattered you came to me with this, Shepard. Not blowing things up has been a lifelong study of mine.”

He led her a safe distance from the camp. The air was both cold and damp, and snow was still thick on the ground.   Shepard hadn’t brought herself to ask yet whether it was winter or spring. She hoped it wasn’t this planet’s summer, since the fur coats everyone was wearing for warmth smelled terrible and teemed with vermin besides.

After walking out of ear and eyeshot of camp, she and Solas found a sheltered circle of dry brown pine needles in a grove of trees.   Shepard had seen a few squealing creatures that all but screamed “barbeque,” but no other animals beyond the large raven-equivalents Leliana was using as messengers.

The trees looked strongly like Earth pine trees, but Shepard was no botanist.

They sank to the ground and faced each other, cross-legged.

At Solas’ delicate gesture, Shepard extended her wrist to him.

“I examined your mark while you slept, Shepard. It is much more stable now that the Breach is reduced. It may stabilize completely if we are able to close it,” he told her, after running his fingers briefly over her palm. It tingled.

“What I’d like to know right now, though, is whether it’s safe to use my omni-tool,” she said.

At his eyebrow flick of inquiry, Shepard briefly explained the functions of her omni-tool. She’d had very advanced design to begin with, and Traynor had upgraded it with a number of useful communications functions, which were largely useless in this area of stone-age communications. A blanket to send smoke signals with would be more useful, Shepard thought wryly.

No, what Shepard really wanted was the omni-tool’s library of Alliance manuals and procedures, not to mention the standard galactic encyclopedia. The scanning function would be useful for cross-referencing plants and animals against their known correspondents. And the fabrication function would be useful for making pointy things for sticking people with.

Solas inspected her wrist again.

“I cannot see how it is different from any of the other machinery imbedded in you,” he confessed. “You have so many…”

This was not a subject Shepard was altogether comfortable discussing.

“Forget about that for a moment,” she broke in. “I wasn’t conscious for most of that being installed, and I’m not totally certain what a lot of it is for.”

Solas blinked in surprise.

“You let someone stick a lot of metal in your body without being sure what it was for?”

“Long story. I’ll tell you later.   Anyway, do you think I’ll blow something up if I turn on the omni-tool?”

“I cannot perceive any connection between the metals in your wrist and the Mark,” he said slowly.   “The Mark itself is tied to the Breach, and likely to those voices we heard in the Temple. The voices did not expect you, however. It therefore stands to reason that your own technology was not connected to the Breach, but to those unknown persons who killed the Divine and themselves caused the Breach.

“So….” Shepard said patiently.

That flash of a grin again.

“I am curious to see what your omni-tool does,” he said.

“Famous last words,” Shepard muttered. “Put up a barrier at least, would you?” He complied, and Shepard saw the blue shimmer that marked his biotics spring over both of them.

She flexed her fingers in the pattern that would activate her imbedded omni-tool. It obligingly whirred to life in a cone of orange holograms encircling her left wrist.

“Set-up required,” a mechanical voice murmured directly into her ear canal. “Voice authorization code, please.”

Shit. That wasn’t good.

“Voice authorization Commander Jane Shepard, SSV Normandy,” she said with more confidence than she felt.

“Voice authorization code not found,” the VI said reproachfully.

Really not good.

Shepard tried her voice password.   “I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel,” she said.

Traynor had urged her to change that password. It won’t be funny after you’re hacked by a kiosk, she had said. I was hacked by a two-year-old, Shepard had said. Security is a fallacy so I might as well amuse myself, she had said. Traynor had tried to retort that that two-year-old in question had been a Cerberus clone of Shepard, but Shepard had stopped paying attention and had wandered away to flirt with James again on the comms.

Damn.

Solas was watching the light show with wide, interested eyes, like a cat with a new ball of string.

“Voice authorization code not found,” the VI repeated.

With a sinking feeling, Shepard said, “Voice authorization Evelyn Trevelyan.”

The omni-tool made a pleasing chirp in her ear and spun to life.

Shepard didn’t recognize the operating system, but it wasn’t even in Alliance colors.  

Welcome to the Andromeda Initiative, said the startup screen. Sync required.

Double damn.

“It’s not my omni-tool,” she told Solas. He looked over the welcome screen. “It belongs to Evelyn Trevelyan of the Andromeda Initiative, whatever that is. None of my data is on it.”

“Shepard,” he said hesitantly. “Is there no possibility that you…took on a different identity? To accomplish your goal, perhaps?”

“I can’t imagine why I would do that,” she snapped at him. “I was pretty notorious for getting shit done. I needed that reputation to cut through the crap to get the resources I needed for fighting the Reapers. I wouldn’t have given up my command and my tools for any reason.”

He frowned. “And if your goal changed?”

Shepard thought about that.

“I haven’t been anyone other than….well, they called me the Butcher of Torfan. The first human SPECTRE. N7. Probably a lot of less flattering things. I’m not sure I know how to be anyone else.”

“And what you were before all that?” He asked.

“Jane Shepard? A fuckup teenager on Mindoir with too many hormones and too few responsibilities? Nobody wants to see her. I didn’t even like her and I was her,” Shepard said lightly. “I’ve been a soldier for a long time, Solas. I never had any real interest in being anything else.”

He nodded. “I understand, Shepard. Does your ‘omni-tool’ have any information about how you came to be here?”

She scanned through a few menus. The date the main menu displayed was October 22, 2187. However, the omni-tool had been shipped in 2185, well before the Reaper invasion. It was going to be useless for telling her what had happened to her in the recent past, as it wasn’t even recording data until configured. The only functions it seemed to have were enhanced scanning and fabrication functions (without any processing power to support analysis), and a large media library. It appeared to have no combat or reconnaissance functions whatsoever installed, as Shepard would have expected for a civilian model. Most distressingly, it was blank. No messages. No pictures. No personalization at all, she told Solas. Shepard felt unexpectedly vulnerable for her lack of her history in a way that waking up with no memory and no armor had not.

“Location, please,” she pleaded with the implant.

The holograms spun around her hand interminably.

“Error,” it finally reported, spinning to a stop. “Location not found. Sync with Nexus network required.”

Shepard sighed. Solas was waiting patiently for her to finish her review. She told him to dismiss his barrier, and he stood and brushed pine needles off the seat of his pants.

“As promised, no explosions,” he said. “Did you find anything useful?”

“A bit,” she responded. “Would you like to come with me to explain to Commander Cullen how to dig out the trench latrines? I plan to use diagrams.”

Solas informed her sorrowfully that he urgently needed to return to his cabin to wash his hair.

Chapter Text

Shepard was in a good mood for the trip to the Hinterlands. While walking didn’t have anything on the Mako as a method of transportation, much less the Hammerhead (she had been the only member of her team who had thought skimming across lava was fun), she hadn’t had the opportunity to experience nature unfiltered through a hard mask in what felt like years. Camping suited her just fine.

Nature made Varric sneeze, he said, but Solas and Cassandra were in agreement with Shepard and made for pleasant company. Shepard was glad she had brought Cassandra along after all. Shepard had made another bid to leave Cassandra at Haven to help organize all of the supply systems and operations she had set in motion, but a nearly-lobotomized elf in a dress had offered his experience in running the mess at Kinloch Hold, and had volunteered to ensure adequate sanitation facilities. Shepard was a little nervous combining mess and latrine functions under one command, but the man had been convincing in his earnestness.

Now that Cassandra was secure in her position on the fire team, she passed the time filling Shepard in on the convoluted local politics. When she wasn’t listening to the difference between a Libertarian and an Aequitarian, Shepard scanned the local flora and fauna as they went.

While some of the plants were unknown in her database, and therefore must have been native, almost every animal was indistinguishable from a Terran standard, plus or minus a genetic mutation or augmentation or two. Whoever had fucked with the bears had been truly crazy, but Shepard had seen Cerberus do much worse. Otherwise, she happily noted corn stalks, wheat stubble, and bison turds as they travelled. There was barbeque in her future, at least. She hadn’t eaten her last burger.

Despite Solas’ rustic get-up, he proved much less handy than Cassandra at identifying edibles along their path. Cassandra pointed out a number of aromatic herbs and new spring onions to augment their provisions. And Varric, much as he bitched, was as adept at skewering delicious, furry creatures with his crossbow bolts as he was at pinning demons. Cassandra, in turn, showed Shepard how to dress and spit Varric’s catch.

Shepard had eaten a lot of algae-based protein bars in the previous few years, not to mention the occasional charred varren topped off with dextro-brew whiskey. A roast rabbit turned over a cheerful campfire was a wholesome delicacy by contrast. Shepard spent several pleasant nights sleeping peacefully and without dreams as they traveled.

When they arrived in the particular ass end of nowhere that officially marked the beginning of the Hinterlands, they were met by a dwarf woman with a face like the first warm breeze of spring. She apparently wanted to fill them in on the location of some horses, but Shepard had trouble concentrating because the scout scrunched up her nose so adorably while she gave her report.

Shepard nudged Varric with her elbow when Lace Harding returned to her duties.

“So I know I’ve only met two of you thus far, but is being ridiculously good-looking a racial trait?”

Varric laughed. “It takes a brave human to admit it, but it’s sadly true. It’s the real reason most of us hide underground with the darkspawn. They’re our last line of defense against handsy tall people.” Shepard companionably swatted at him, and he tossed an empty waterskin at her in defense while they both chuckled.

“Do all our scouts look like that? I need to patrol the frontiers! I need an elite Dwarven guard! I’ll recruit them myself!”

Even Solas was laughing.

Cassandra sighed impatiently and hustled them out of the forward camp. Shepard was still in a good mood until they reached the Crossroads.

Haven had had about 500 people living in it. Shepard had seen fewer than a tenth of those people be involved in the assault on the GAP at the Temple. This population group felt normal to Shepard’s conception of a small, rustic colony. Mindoir had been of a similar size, in Shepard’s earliest memories.

More than that number were fighting, dying, or already dead at the Crossroads.

Dark shapes in the grass in Mr. Nguyen’s front yard. Mrs. Nguyen is kneeling in front of the aliens. Where are her kids?

Shepard can hear children crying from burning cabins.

Dad took the hover to the station to find out why they’re not answering. Why isn’t he back? Why didn’t he take me with him? Why won’t he answer?

A man in robes is using the blade attached to his staff to saw through the neck of a supine Templar. The cut is still bleeding. Cassandra is whispering flanking maneuvers in Shepard’s ear.

The aliens are burning a hole in the front door. Oh no they are going to find me oh no.

A group of Templars had surrounded a mage who slumped to his knees in exhaustion. One casually kicked the mage in the face with her mailed boot, then stuck her sword into his kidneys as he fell. Varric offers to lay down some covering fire over Cassandra.

I’m not supposed to know where Mom keeps her gun but I’m afraid.

A civilian who had sheltered under an overturned cart startled from his cover in panic and made a break for the distant line of cabins. An arrow took him in the knee before he could make it five yards. He fell, squealing with agony. Solas’ magic envelops Shepard in cool blue light.

Shoot it in the eyes! It’s got to have brains near its eyes.

Battle-rage had sustained Shepard through many unwinnable battles- from Mindoir to Torfan to Eden Prime to Sanctuary. She had seen atrocities performed at the hands of slavers, mercenaries, indoctrinated Cerberus agents, and Reapers. But she had never seen ordinary human beings slaughter each other with the zeal of the battle before her. And never had her enemies been as susceptible to Shepard’s deadly vengeance as those before her.

“Stay behind cover, and watch,” said Shepard. She can’t even hear Cassandra’s protests.

Mass effect fields crush Templars in their own armor. Shepard ripped the weapons out of the hands of the lighter combatants and impaled them on their own knives. Unshielded mages were warped into a fine, even pink paste.

Distantly, over the roaring in her ears, Shepard could hear Cassandra gagging. The battlefield is abruptly silenced.

Shepard suspended the last group of Templars in the air. The weight of their own internal organs was compressing their lungs. Shepard could have squeezed the remaining air from their bodies and left them to suffocate on the ground. Instead, she let her fields vanish. They fell to the ground and began coughing wetly on their hands and knees in the blood-soaked dirt.

“Maleficar!” One of them managed to gasp out. Shepard squashed him like an insect, and with as little effort. His comrades were wiser than him and remained silent, chests heaving.

“Your mission was to protect, and instead you savaged civilians,” Shepard gritted out. “Run and tell your friends that they need to renew their relationship with their holy vows or I won’t leave enough of them intact to be identified by a DNA scanner.”

She knew that would go right over their heads, but they scarpered off easily enough down the road, tripping over their armored feet.

Shepard turned to check the wellbeing of her team. Cassandra was wiping her mouth off with the back of her hand, and looked angry. Varric was white-faced and grim, with little parentheses of strain around his mouth. Solas’ expression was blank.

Shepard gestured loosely at the debris that had recently been human beings.

“You want me to be your Herald? You want me to be in charge? Well, this is how I fight. I don’t just fight to win one battle. I fight to win all the battles. I fight to win wars. This is how you win wars, Cassandra. If I let you stick them with your pointy bit, they figure they’ll come back tomorrow with more guys and more pointy bits and maybe tomorrow they’ll beat you. Or the day after that. After this? They know they won’t win. They’ll never win, no matter how many guys and no matter how many pointy bits they have. They know their war is over. And that’s why I’m in charge out in the field.”

“I don’t think anyone was questioning that you’re in charge, dollface,” murmured Varric.

“I wasn’t questioning your tactics,” said Cassandra. “I was merely…unprepared. For your magic.”

“Science,” said Shepard.

“A science so advanced it is indistinguishable from magic,” corrected Solas.

Shepard waved her hand at him dismissively. “Anyone could do this, if they were lucky enough to be caught downwind of a shuttle accident.”

“Anyone could fly, if they had wings, you mean,” said Varric.

Shepard gave him a smile that was mostly bared teeth. “We all used to have wings, Varric. It’s not my fault you all decided to crawl around in the mud instead.”

* * *

The locals were a bottomless pit of needs to be filled. Their minds were all but shattered from the atrocities they had suffered alternately at the hands of rogue Templars and apostate mages. Most had given up on attending to even their basic needs, and merely huddled together in flimsy shelters for warmth. Shepard was clearly familiar with refugees, and began triaging requests for food, warm clothes, and medicine in her brusque way.

Cassandra made inquiries among the lay sisters who had appeared after the fighting to gather the bodies and attend to the wounded, and determined that Mother Giselle was attending to some wounded Redcliffe soldiers in a nearby lodge.

Shepard had been reluctant to engage with the Chantry hierarchy in the first place, and was obviously loathe to leave her interrogation of Corporal Vale, but Cassandra insisted that she meet with Mother Giselle immediately.

Mother Giselle’s soothing tones and measured pace were a balm to Cassandra’s troubled spirit. She reminded her immediately of Divine Justinia, and Cassandra fought the urge to kneel and put her head on the woman’s knee. What she wouldn’t give, she thought, to be able to lay down her burden for a moment and simply absorb the peace of the Maker’s presence that the best of the Chantry’s mothers had always brought to her.

“Let balance be restored, and the world given eternal light,” murmured Mother Giselle.

Cassandra bowed her head.

Shepard was not attending Mother Giselle’s words, and was instead craning her head to watch a mage healing a slash down a soldier’s calf.

Cassandra roughly cleared her throat, and Shepard turned back to the two other women, ill at ease.

“I’m not very familiar with clergy,” she finally said.

Mother Giselle gracefully nodded her head.

“I have heard that you are a stranger here, an outlander from no country under the Chant,” she said.

“Yeah, that’s one way of saying it,” said Shepard.

Mother Giselle smiled down at her clasped hands.

“In our hour of need, the Maker demonstrates his infinite power in sending us the instrument of our delivery from beyond the furthest shores,” she said.

Cassandra was privately forced to agree.

Shepard gave her a hard smile.

“Wouldn’t you prefer that the Maker had demonstrated his power a few minutes earlier to stop the Divine’s murder and the GAP in the first place?”

Mother Giselle gently twisted her hands in her robed lap.

“The Maker had often been saddened by the choices his children make, but he had never revoked his gifts of free will, by which we so often err. It is when we freely choose the light that we will truly be worthy of Him,” she chastised Shepard, who turned away to look out the door of the cabin where they sat.

They all know what Shepard is looking at- the bodies of the combatants had been left where they fell. Nobody wanted to waste the firewood to give pyres to their assailants.

“Tell me,” said Mother Giselle. “Do your people have no gods?”

Shepard closed her eyes to think. “I have known and respected people who worshipped a god much like your Maker. And others who worshipped many gods who would find your Maker very strange.”

“And you?”

“I find it hard to believe in much of anything, these days,” said Shepard wearily. “There are things I absolutely knew to be true, but which I find myself alone in believing. At the same time, people tell me things about myself that conflict with….everything. My core beliefs. My oaths.” She shook her head again.

Cassandra can sympathize with that too.

Mother Giselle looked at Shepard curiously.

“And you do not know whether your heart can hold any new truths?”

“I believe in six impossible things before breakfast every day,” said Shepard. “It’s more that I question whether everyone else can handle my truths. Whether they should have to handle my truths.”

Mother Giselle favored Shepard with another gentle smile.

“Ah, then allow me to give you a little advice, if you will permit me. Do not make truth your sword, like Hessarian. Truth is a gift, if you treat it so. Bestow it gently. Grant others your truths only on the occasions that require them. And like the best gifts, truths must be wrapped in the fastenings in which the recipient wishes to accept them. Do you take my meaning?”

Shepard was nodding, but the speech was a bit too Orlesian for Cassandra’s understanding.

“Revered mother, forgive me, but I do not take your meaning. We must meet with the remnants of the Chantry hierarchy in Val Royeaux, that is obvious, but what should we tell them?” Cassandra implored.

Lay sisters bustled around them, providing cups of weak tea, which they all accepted gratefully. Mother Giselle took a delicate sip before responding.

“Tell them the truth,” she said firmly. “But in a way they will understand. The Herald is a stranger with strange ways and strange powers. But we must all see the Maker’s hand in this. She has much to learn from us, as we do from her. Praise Andraste, that she had interceded with the Maker again to give us this opportunity to better understand His will.” And then she looked straight at Cassandra and winked, of all things.

And Cassandra understood that she could allow herself to believe that Shepard was telling the truth, and that the world was far larger and stranger than she had ever dreamed. And she felt the Maker’s presence with her still.

* * *

“So I guess we’re headed to Val Royeaux next?” asked Varric somewhat hopefully the next morning. Shepard had been out late mixing with the Inquisition soldiers and drinking rotgut with the refugees the night before, and Varric was even less equipped to deal with nature when he had a hangover.

Merrill had told him once that the pollen that aggravated his throat so much was how plants reproduced. He had told her that plants could fuck right on out of his nasal passages if that was the case.

Shepard, of course, had woken up bright eyed and full of energy. He wasn’t sure she’d even gotten drunk the night before, even though she’d been more than matching him shot for shot. That much rotgut would have put Hawke on the floor, and Hawke had previously occupied the pedestal of hardest-drinking human woman for him.

He hoped Hawke and Shepard never met.

Shepard was giving him a disappointed parent look. He hadn’t liked that look on his own parents’ faces, and he was not excited to see it on hers.

“Varric! We have rifts to close! Refugees to clothe! Terrain to explore!” she told him reproachfully. “We can’t leave until we have fully secured the area.”

Varric would never have expected the Seeker to back him up on anything, but she cleared her throat and said, “It is not that the tasks you have identified are not worthy of us, Herald, but are they truly the most pressing? Surely we could return at a later time after we have addressed the concerns of the remaining Chantry.”

Shepard was unimpressed. “They can’t excommunicate me if they can’t find me, Cassandra. Did your Seekers train you to leave a task half-done? You never know if you’ll be able to come back to a problem. Better to solve it right the first time. We’ll fix what we can before we go.”

And that was how Varric found himself walking back and forth across the absolute arse-end of Thedas for the subsequent week.

Shepard stole some coats from the mages to give to the refugees.

“Skillfully acquired,” Shepard insisted.

Shepard met a religious cult that offered to worship her. She was tactfully non-committal and sent them off to Haven.

“Absolutely no human sacrifices,” Shepard said sternly. “And I’d better not hear about any misbehavior involving those sheep.”

They destroyed some red lyrium, plus demons.

“My scanner just says its eezo-rich ore. But it can’t scan for indoctrination. Or evil, I guess, said Shepard.”

Shepard yelled at more Templars and mages to stop fighting. They declined, and she turned their entrails into extrails.

“Varric, it is not polite to watch Cassandra yack,” said Shepard.

They killed a lot of rams.

“Tastes like varren,” Shepard said.

They procured some horses from a crusty old Fereldan soldier, who promised to send them down the road to Haven.

“Not for me. My last ride also had free will and self-determination, and I’ve come to the conclusion it was just more trouble than it was worth,” Shepard said.

Cassandra and Solas even seemed to be enjoying these endless series of mildly heroic fetch quests. Varric decided that if he was stuck out in the field indefinitely with these objectively crazy people, the only thing to do was to start working on his next book about them.

Chapter Text

The buoying effect of her many successes in the Hinterlands disappeared soon after Shepard humped back to Haven.

She could not have articulated it, but she had the dim sense, in the back of her mind, that retuning from the mission meant that she would have a hot shower and a meal. She would have Dr. Chakwas’ careful touch, and Joker’s snarky greeting, which meant that he had missed her. She would feed her fish. She would sleep in her bed. She would hear the hum of the Normandy’s air purifiers and drift off to sleep with the smell of amine in her nostrils.

Haven offered her no comforts.

Not only had the War Council (better looking than Shepard’s previous Council, but no less contentious) failed to make any progress in securing their base, hardening supply lines, or improving sanitation, they were no closer to explaining the provenance of either the GAP or Shepard.

“I’m a little disappointed,” Shepard told them, with crossed arms.

She was a lot disappointed.

The War Council hadn’t expected that response, and Cullen in particular seemed to expect a pat on the head for recruiting a bunch of farm boys and turning them into farm boys with pointy things.

“What did you think you were doing with that sack of hammers out there? It’s not like they’re going to be much defense against the Reapers, and you’ve increased our risk of eye-pokings and toe-slicings by about a thousand percent,” Shepard told him.

Cullen flushed red, rubbed the back of his neck, and began to stammer out that the Inquisition needed a fighting force to impress any potential powers that might lend aid in closing the breach.

“Well, if all they have to do is look like a fighting force, tell them to take off their shiny new armor before they cut themselves with it, put it in a safe place, and then get to work digging out those latrines I asked for. Honestly, people, if you keep shitting in the fields, the entire Inquisition is going to perish from dysentery before the Reapers even get here,” said Shepard irritably.

Cullen shifted and averted his eyes.

“Josephine, you’ve actually done a good job…”

“Actually?” muttered Cullen.

“…and the new hospital resources should get our experienced combatants back into fighting shape. Keep up whatever you’re doing, we can use all the resources we can get. Promise the locals I’ll put in a good word for them with the guy upstairs if you have to. Leliana? Nothing? Really?”

Shepard did not appreciate the stony expression Leliana was sending her. That expression, in Shepard’s experience, was often followed by cluster grenades. It suddenly occurred to Shepard that this Council had not yet actually put her in charge of war efforts, and it was possible that Leliana did not appreciate redheaded strangers criticizing her performance.

Oh well, Shepard thought. If she shanks me to death in my sleep, maybe next time I’ll wake up somewhere with central heating again.

“I am still following some leads among Templars who were not killed in the initial explosion at the Breach,” Leliana said. “There are close to a dozen ravens which have not yet returned from my last dispatch.”

“Ravens,” said Shepard, and shook her head. “Well, let’s, uh, make sure we have lots of …corn. And people waiting. For the birds to come back.”

Maybe her cabin would be avian-free upon her return.

They discussed the trip to Val Royeaux and made plans for the fire team to depart the next morning.

After Shepard took a quick whore’s bath in a bucket in her cabin (the birds had been replaced with sacks of turnips, which were quieter company, at the least), she went back out to explore her own leads on the GAP.

Which were fairly limited.

She barely knew half a dozen people in the entire colony, and none of them promised to expound on the events creating the GAP.

Except Solas, Shepard thought brightly.

She rousted him, blinking, from his cabin. It was scarcely an hour after sunset, and yet it appeared, from his wrinkled expression, that he’d already gone to bed. What with his pajamas-as-daywear clothing choices, though, it was hard to tell.

He greeted her civilly enough, anyway.

“How can I be of service, Herald? I will be ready to travel to Val Royeaux in the morning.”

“So, this isn’t, oddly enough, the first time I’ve had some memory loss about important events,” Shepard told him. “Can you pull what I saw from my mind? Either in that dream-state or, you know….embrace eternity? I need to try to recover what happened to me. Us.”

He blinked in surprise, finely arched eyebrows arching. “I am sorry, but that is not a skill my people have ever possessed. The Fade can reflect memories, true, but they are drawn from your subconscious, not your or my choice. Do your people have the ability to share memories at will, then?”

“Not mine,” said Shepard. “Asari. And Protheans, to some extent.”

“Asari? Protheans?” Solas asked curiously. “Are those different tribes of humans?”

Shepard gestured for Solas to step a few feet out of his cabin and into the brisk outside air.

She engaged her omni-tool. At first, she thought of searching for an image of Liara- she’d been fairly notorious, after Matriarch Benezia’s defection to Saren’s cause, and Shepard had thought of looking her up on the embedded encyclopedia. But the thought pained her bruised heart, and Shepard didn’t think she was ready to look at familiar faces she might never see in the flesh again.

So she pulled up a holo of the asari councilor. There was an emotionally neutral subject, if there ever was one.

“This is an asari I knew. A leader of her people. Ever see anyone who looked like this?” Shepard asked Solas.

He shook his head in wonderment. “No…but this ability you describe. To share the minds of others. She had it?”

“They all did,” Shepard replied. “It was how her race reproduced. They’re all biologically female. But they could meld with the minds of others, and use that touch to randomize their own DNA to have more little asari. A lot of humans were married to asari, in my….time.”

Solas inclined his head in thought. “So the asari would have children with others, who were always asari? Did the humans not fear eventual extinction, as the elves and dwarves do from having human children with humans?”

“Well, having more asari wasn’t considered a big problem. Almost everyone liked asari. It’s not like they were stopping humans from making more humans. Not like the salarians with the krogan, anyway.”

She pulled up holos of the Salarian councilor and Urdnot Wreav, in succession. Solas looked at them carefully as well, and shook his head. Shepard flashed holos of turians, volus, elcor, quarians.. A Prothean statue. Even geth.

“You’ve seen dreams of people all over this world,” she said, with a little heat. “You’ve never seen any of them? From any time?”

Solas shook his head and met her eyes sorrowfully. “This troubles you,” he said. “That these…peoples…do not live here too. Do your humans truly live so closely with others?”

Shepard gave him a sad quirk of her lips. “Not always without problems, no, but we accept that the ideal is closer understanding and cooperation for the benefit of all. I had a lot of aliens on my ship. Friends. Closer than that,” she admitted, watching his reaction.

He didn’t color and look away, like she thought he might.

“It sounds as though the humans of this world would have much to learn from those of your own, Shepard,” he said without artifice. “To the extent you both are considered humans, anyway.”

“You have your doubts about my humanity, Solas? I mean, you’re not the first to wonder, but that stings a bit…” Shepard mused.

He barked a short laugh. “No, Shepard, only that there are a few differences between you, physiologically, from the human people of this world. Not that I am an expert on such things, in any event.”

Shepard leaned closer to him.

“I don’t know who’s in charge of saying who’s human or not, around here, or who gets appointed an expert, but I don’t think there are a lot of differences between you and me,” she said. She looked him directly in his blue eyes, gaze catching on the long lashes.

Solas took a step back, with a sad smile. He did not pretend to misunderstand.

“I hope you will not be disappointed, when you learn otherwise, then,” he murmured, and bid her goodnight.

Shepard watched his retreating back, and glanced down to her omni-tool, still spinning with holos of aliens she had known. Rejection stuck in the back of her throat like a blade.

My last boyfriend had gills, she thought. Bet his pointy head would explode if I told him that.

Haven was still bustling at the early hour, with loud singing coming out of the ersatz tavern, and workers moving about the camp with lamps and torches.

Shepard nodded at the people she passed, but most startled and averted their eyes, or stopped to give that fist-over-heart salute. Varric was absent from his usual campfire, and so Shepard continued walking downhill, with no particular destination. The noise and movement of camp faded as she wandered on, until she reached the docks stretching out into the frozen lake.

The night was clear, for once, and stars were visible at the edges of the sky, away from the swirling green of the breach.

Shepard extended her left arm towards the horizon.

* * *

She was still standing there nearly a quarter hour later when Commander Cullen finally approached her. He’d been sharpening swords and polishing armor, bargaining with himself that he would not take lyrium but would instead finish so many tasks. As though the time spent was equivalent. He saw Shepard’s unmistakable long-necked figure slowly walk out of the camp to the lake. Eventually, he grew bold enough to leave his tent and campfire to approach her.

She heard his mailed footsteps as he cautiously approached her along the dock, but she did not turn.

“Are you working on the Breach again, Herald?” he asked.

She finally lowered her hand.

He almost thought, for a moment, that the Herald was crying, but it was hard to tell in the dark.

“Scanning the stars,” she said brusquely. “They’d be in different positions, but their ratios of size to luminosity shouldn’t have changed very much, even if a great deal of time had passed. I was hoping to ascertain my position via triangulation, even without any communications data.”

“Ah,” he said, as though he understood, although he did not.

She poked again at the lit machine on her arm before it vanished into her skin.

“No matches. Not a single one,” she said harshly. “I don’t know a single star. How is that possible, Cullen? How can even the stars be strangers? I used to know so many.”

Her chest was rising and falling with distress. She closed her eyes as though in pain.

She was very startled to feel the tentative touch of his gloved palm on her shoulder.

When she opened her eyes, he was pointing with his other arm at a bright bluish star before them on the horizon.

“That’s Asterius. It’s the top of the left wing in Draconis. See that little one above it to the right? That’s the wing tip. In another month, you’ll be able to see the entirety of the dragon just before dawn.”

Shepard took in a shuddering breath and scrubbed her palms over her eyes firmly. She blinked multiple times and leaned forward slightly.

“I see it,” she said roughly.

Cullen nodded, and cleared his throat.

“Do you know any of the paired stars?” She asked.

He waited a beat and continued.

“Those two over there are the twins. The ones just a hair apart? They’re always together, but they move around the sky. It’s time to plant wheat when they’re just over the horizon at midnight. . . . “

He named them all until she ran out of stars.

* * *

Val Royeaux was a pleasant surprise. After more than two weeks’ hard travel, they arrived at the outskirts of the Orlesian capital. Shepard had finally been convinced to board a very calm, sleepy-looking grey mare who barely acknowledged the fact that Shepard had awkwardly clambered onto her back each morning.

Mountains had given way to forests had given way to pasture. It was winter, so it was hard to tell, but it seemed to Shepard’s eye, as a child of farmers, that too many fields were fallow. The cows and rams she could see picking through dry golden fields were too skinny, even for the season. Even some vinyards showed signs of neglect- brown stalks had not been cut back after the harvest, and dried weeks choked the vines. Here and there, a house had been burned to black broken teeth of rubble.

The environs of Val Royeaux were free of trouble, if not bandits. The stone houses grew closer and closer to each other before being replaced by brick, and finally white plaster over marble.

When they finally reached the outer walls that marked the true boundaries of the city, some tension seemed to depart their party, and shoulders which had slumped for travel straightened.

Shepard squinted, impressed, at the golden spires she could see rising out of the hilltop before her in the late afternoon sunlight. The lake folly shone like a mirror.

Varric shot her a smug look from the back of his ill-tempered pony.

“Weren’t you listening to all my stories about the big frilly city full of big frilly people we were going to meet?” he asked.

“I thought it was all exaggeration, and we were going to see maybe some two-story hovels made of shinier rocks, and dogs wearing actual collars,” she said with a grin.

“That’s the Fereldan capital, Shepard!” Varric replied. “This is Orlais. Their hovels have decorative columns and their dogs look like cats.”

Shepard laughed as they rode to a respectable three-story brick inn recommended by both Leliana and Josephine, and stabled their horses.

Shepard splashed her head and arms in the cold yet clear water sprouting from the cheerful courtyard fountain and grinned at Cassandra in delight. Shepard spread her arms. “Look at this place, Cassandra!” she said. “I saw pipes running up the walls. Running water. And chickens. I’m going to eat those chickens.” She threw back her head and laughed.

Cassandra laughed with her, despite herself.

“If all I knew of the world was Haven and the Hinterlands, I would have great reservations as to human advancement too, Shepard,” she said. “I myself would not mind the opportunity to purchase some necessities and clean off the dust of the road, if it will not delay our mission.”

Shepard’s purse was full of shiny coins taken off the last group of bandits she had liquidated along the way, so she walked confidently up to the costumed proprietor and requested his finest rooms for four. He craned his head as if to see around the frame of the doorway where Solas and Varric trailed the two women into the front room.

Two unmasked elven servants, one loading new logs into a fireplace over an ornate brass grate, and the other desultorily sweeping the hall, regarded the party with mild interest.

“Of course, my lady,” said the innkeeper. “Will you also require rooms in the outbuilding for your servants, or will they remain with the horses?”

Shepard spun around to verify that he was referring to Solas and Varric.

“Uh, no,” she said. “This is the four of us right here. We need four rooms. All in this building.”

The innkeeper sneered at her from beneath his painted mask. His large lace ruff nearly covered his chins, even when he leaned back to stare down his nose at Solas, who blinked at him blandly.

“Orlesian law does not permit the renting of rooms to rabbits in the same habitation as other people,” he said stiffly.

Shepard drummed a gold coin on the counter between herself and the innkeeper thoughtfully. She glanced at the elven servants, who averted their eyes and hurried with their tasks.

“Ok,” she said simply. “So give me the largest room and Solas here can split with me. No problem then, right?”

There were squeaky noises of protest from both Solas and Cassandra. The innkeeper’s sneer deepened, if possible.

“I see,” the man sniffed. “I cannot bring myself to inquire further. I shall place you all on the third floor, in the left hallway. Baths in the basement, tell my girl to stoke the fires if it’s after midmorning. I…encourage you to take your meals in your rooms, outside of the common area. I have decent Andrastrians as guests, after all.”

He huffily parceled out their keys and overcharged Shepard.

Shepard was contentedly hustling towards the baths when Solas caught her arm roughly from behind. She restrained herself from tossing him down the hall with her biotics and gave him a bright smile.

“You do not understand…” he began.

“What?” said Shepard. “What don’t I understand?”

Solas’ color was up; he was angry. He was struggling with words that wouldn’t come. His freckles were more prominent when he was flushed, Shepard had noticed.

“Oh, the room,” she said. “Well, you don’t mind splitting with me, do you? You can have the bed. I don’t even care where I have to sleep as long as I have the opportunity to get clean. I’ve been told I don’t snore- I think my sinus cavities were replaced with sonar receivers, anyway.” Her words were light, but her smile was hard, and her eyes glittered. She watched him like a predator.

Solas remembered that she was dangerous, and a stranger. He could not treat her like she was human. And he could not treat her as though he were just an elven apostate caught up in a human war.

It occurred to him that she looked angry, too.

He inclined his head graciously.

“You are too kind, Shepard.”

* * *

Solas took his turn in the baths while Shepard finished interrogating the elven server about their culinary offerings. She had been ordering what sounded like a truly extraordinary amount of food, but she had many questions about the ingredients, their provenance, and their preparation. The young, pale-haired serving girl kept shooting Solas looks of annoyance, as though she expected him to rescue her from the conversation with Shepard. He supposed that she must be the agent he was due to meet the next evening. If she was indiscreet enough to suggest their connection in front of a human, though, he imagined he would have to cancel the meeting and sever the connection.

He took a long time scrubbing the embedded dust of the road out of his skin and from under his nails. Finding himself alone in the bathing chamber, he drew himself a second bath just for the luxury of relaxing in clean water. The adjustment to feeling faintly dirty at all times had at time felt like his biggest obstacle to blending in during these disastrous times, and he cherished the brief moment when he might feel warm and clean together.

He had not looked around his room for longer than the time it look to drop his packs, before, and he padded up the stairs and down the third-floor hallway cautiously. Cassandra and Varric had both taken to drafting correspondence when they arrived, but Shepard had immediately started stripping down to her smallclothes before he fled the room. They had all done as much while out in the field, but it felt rather more personal indoors in a shared bedroom.

Solas slowly pushed the thick cherry wood door open and peered around the room.

A table in the center of the room was laden with many dishes, some covered, some holding the devastated remains of a large dinner. A whole roast chicken had been stripped to a skeleton, a large bunch of grapes had been denuded of fruit, and crumbs on the floor suggested there had been pastries at some point. Solas peeked under a lid and found cold sliced meat and more fruit. Thoughtful, assuming it was for him.

Shepard herself was spread across the bed fast asleep on her stomach. As she was sleeping on top of the green brocade counterpane, she must have fallen asleep while waiting for him to return. She was wearing a loose linen shirt and drawstring shorts that looked like Templar undergarments. He could not fault her choice of sleeping wear, though, because her bare legs that extended over to the edges of the bed looked as smooth and soft as any elven maiden’s.

Solas sighed and pulled a red wool throw off an armchair. He would sleep on the over-stuffed chaise lounge by the gable window, although it was upholstered in a repulsive yellow velvet. It looked softer than anything he had slept on recently in any event.

Solas wrapped himself in the blanket and tried to prepare his mind for his tasks that night in the Fade. He had many agents that he could contact in Val Royeaux, and if he had time, he might even reach those in Halamshiral. Shepard shifted in her sleep in an apparent effort to occupy even more territory in the bed. Solas did not envy the lovers who had to fight that battle with her, at least.

He eventually fell asleep to the sound of Shepard’s soft breathing.

* * *

Shepard was awake early the next morning, a soldier’s habit. Hungry, again. Shepard had been losing weight at a steady pace due to her consistent use of her biotics and the lack of sufficiently calorie-rich food. She hadn’t realized how often she had used her sidearm until she had to lift every fuckstain bandit she encountered with her mind and hurl him against a tree to take him down. Her Locust would have dispatched entire companies of brigands in seconds.

Solas was sleeping peacefully on the lounge chair, a cushion firmly pressed over his head to block any stray light from the shuttered window. Shepard felt a moment’s brief guilt over taking the bed the previous night- but only a moment’s. It had been very comfortable- thick velvet comforter over a feather mattress. Only on one weekend’s long-ago shore leave in Montreal, right after she had made Commander and was feeling flush had Shepard ever slept in a bed that fancy.

Shepard dressed as quietly as she could and went looking for breakfast. She discovered that the Orlesians did not have coffee, but they did have strong tea and a stronger grasp of the breakfast pastry. She ordered up several baskets of pastries, more roast chicken, and a dish of coddled eggs.

Varric and Cassandra joined her soon after her second croissant with strawberry jam, and both had messages from their various contacts in the city, as well as Leliana’s agents. They attempted to impart some understanding of Chantry politics into her unwilling brain, and failing that, a strong warning against blasphemy.

Solas eventually shuffled into the breakfast room and cast her a baleful look when he unstopped the jar that had held the strawberry jam to find it scraped clean. Shepard daintly licked the last of the jam off the corner of her mouth and suggested that they meet the loyalist clerics where they were reputed to gather in the main square.

Shepard unabashedly gawked like a tourist as they walked paved avenues studded with statuary and brass plaques towards the center of the city. She admired the marble monuments and gilded details of the architecture. It was different from the clean-lined, minimalist asari architecture which was nearly uniform across the capitals of her galaxy, but her wayfarer’s mind treasured uniqueness where she found it. She wondered if the human temptation to gild the lily would radically change the architecture of the Presidium, once a few more millennia had passed.

“I like Val Royeaux,” Solas mused. “I must admire its unironic devotion to perfection in excess, from the highest to the lowest. I once observed the dream of Celene’s third vegetable-master. She dreamt almost exclusively of aubergines. She was convinced that if she could improve upon the second vegetable master’s recipe for aubergine gratinee, she might someday usurp her position and gain a second stripe on her apron collar. She did not dream of reaching the rank of first vegetable master.”

When they had almost reached the main square, another of Leliana’s agents approached to warn them that it was not only clerics but Templars waiting to address them.

From there, it pretty much degenerated into a soup sandwich.

The clerics were there to gain status by denouncing her. The Templars were there to gain status by denouncing the clerics. The leader of the Templars, an apparent acquaintance of Cassandra’s, had crazy eyes and an almost cartoonishly villainous sneer as he knocked down old women and hustled his men off the scene. He said that Shepard had showed him “less than nothing.”

Where is Blasto when I need him, Shepard thought. He’d have a speech to win the crowd and put this Lord Seeker in his place before he could twirl his moustache.

This one is prepared to show you something, Lucius, but it is nothing your sister has not already viewed during the previous solar cycle.

The looks Cassandra was shooting her let Shepard know that the Seeker was nervous that Shepard was going to start tossing those raving shitgibbons around with a singularity field, but as tempting as that prospect was, Shepard knew the difference between actual combatants and annoying civilians.

She sighed and helped the revered mother to her feet, and promised that regardless of whether she held the Maker’s favor, she was going to devote her considerable talents to closing the Breach. The clerics remained unimpressed.

“As much as I enjoy playing tourist, I’m afraid this has been a waste of time,” Shepard moaned to her team.

Varric shook his head “Not so fast, dollface. The Chantry’s not the only power at work in in Val Royeaux. We shouldn’t leave until we’ve made contact with the nobility and the underworld, too. Nobody likes a big hole in the sky, and we’ve been putting about that you’re the only gal in Thedas who can do something about it. Not everyone is going to firmly insert their thumbs in their eyesockets like the Templars.”

Varric was right enough- an afternoon spent strolling the lushly planted allees of the grand market yielded a number of eager recruits, new material and weapons for the troops, one invitation to a fancy party, one invitation to an ambush in a back alley, and, oddest of all, a solo encounter with the purported leader of the mage rebellion on the way out of the city.

They were all a little bemused as they dispatched ravens back to Haven and adjusted their plans.

“It never goes as you’d expect,” Solas murmured.

“Never. Not even a single time,” Shepard agreed.

Chapter Text

Sera sent Shepard on a scavenger hunt and then put an arrow through a visor slot at 20 paces. Shepard thought she might be in love.

“Are you totally wedded to the longbow, or would you be interested in something with a little more…kick?” Shepard asked Sera as the elf retrieved her arrow from the man’s sinuses with a sickening squelchy sound. The elf wiped the arrow off on her trousers, because obviously she wanted her arrows to be clean.

“Eh, you want to kit me out with one of those big compensation machines like the dwarf’s got? ‘Cause I don’t mind being short, and my arms are too flappy for something that big,” Sera demurred.

Shepard put a soothing hand on Varric’s shoulder as he apologized to his crossbow on Sera’s behalf.

“There’s only one Bianca. But I think I might be able to mock up a rifle that would let you shoot like that from double the distance,” Shepard said. “If you’re interested.”

“It’s about the assholes, not the arrows, isn’t it?” Sera said philosophically. “Happy to kill these mingers however you like it done.”

* * *

It took nearly an entire day to prepare to attend the fete thrown by the Duke of Ghyslain. Cassandra would have approved Shepard attending in her armor, which was always Shepard’s first choice as well, but Varric, of all people, had been the one to quash that idea.

“Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of princess, Seeker? Honestly, this must be why they sent you to the Chantry. She can’t go in armor. They’ll think she’s an ignorant barbarian. Which is the last thing she can look like if she is an ignorant barbarian.”

“I prefer uneducated thug, thank you very much,” muttered Shepard. “I’ve met people with really excellent manners. I just didn’t learn anything from them,” she said.

Solas put his hand on his handsome cleft chin and squinted at Varric.

“It would not necessarily be a bad thing if they underestimated her, Varric,” he said. “She can get away with a lot more if nobody is expecting much from her.”

“No, that’s your shtick, chuckles,” Varric said, shocking Solas into silence. “You only want to be underestimated if you’re looking to hide your secret overwhelming power from the world. But I’m pretty sure everyone already knows that dollface here can kill ten men in a single bound and close rifts. What they don’t know is that she can play well with others and lead forces of many disparate nations in a single-minded quest to restore order.”

“That’s from your new book, isn’t it,” Cassandra said flatly.

“I’m obviously still playing with the wording,” Varric said with a grin. “What I’m trying to say is that Shepard needs to waltz in wearing a killer dress and wow them with her charm.”

“We’ve only got one day, Varric,” said Cassandra, and they all squinted again at Shepard.

“I have charm!” Shepard protested. “I once convinced an entire jury of Quarians to acquit my shipmate of a crime she probably did commit by insinuating that I’d sink their entire fleet if they didn’t.”

“There’s a difference between charm and intimidation, dollface,” said Varric. “And we need to get started if we’re going to get you that dress.”

Luckily, in Val Royeaux, it was possible to have eveningwear prepared by entire teams of seamstresses while you waited, if one had sufficient coin.

Varric supervised both the selection and preparation of the dress while the rest of them watched in amused stupefaction.

“Should I get it in black or grey?” Shepard asked, looking at some dresses made of knit jersey wool.

“Neither, Shepard, you’re not a widow or a governess, at least that we know of,” Varric grunted disapprovingly. “Claret silk gauze,” he told the attending seamstress, pointing at a mannequin. “Won’t show wrinkles or blood,” he said, after a moment’s contemplation. “And it’s got an asymmetrical neckline, so you won’t need jewelry you don’t own, yet.

Shepard was shoved into a curtained vestibule along with a no-nonsense seamstress, divested of her clothing, and efficiently clothed in the red dress, which, sure enough, fit her fairly well. Cassandra and Solas gave some polite applause when she emerged.

“I took some silver bracelets off the last set of bandits, would those work?” Shepard asked.

“No Shepard, you can’t wear silver with your coloring,” Varric said.

Solas couldn’t help himself anymore, and he noted that Varric seemed to know an awful lot about women’s clothing for a dwarf displaying a massive quantity of chest hair.

“Who do you think dressed Hawke for all those years after she got back from the Deep Roads?” he said with a huff. “She really is a barbarian. She wouldn’t even have remembered to wash off the blood before she showed up at this party, and she would have brought her dog along too.”

Shepard had been corralled by a trio of elven fitting girls, and they were sticking her with pins while they adjusted the waistline of the dress. Varric watched the process with furrowed brow.

“You don’t have the tits on Hawke, though,” he said critically. “Let’s do a scarf or something.”

Shepard resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. Cassandra pursed her lips and gave Varric a speculative look.

“Do you think Hawke returned to Ferelden, then?” she asked Varric with faux disinterest.

Varric buffed his fingernails against his chest hair.

“Hard to say, really. So many dragons in the world, and only one Hawke to slay them. It’s hard to get a raven to deliver correspondence to ‘a stinking lair of hideous cave monsters, probably,’ you know.”

“I see,” said Cassandra, unconvinced.

“Can I get dressed now?” Shepard said plaintively.

* * *

Beautiful clothes could be their own kind of armor, Shepard decided, as she walked through the bronze, two-story front doors guarding the entrance to the Duke of Ghyslain’s manor. It rivaled anything Shepard had seen on Bekenstein for size and ornament. She was glad that Varric hadn’t tried to match the floofy skirts and bejeweled masks that were the current style, but she knew from the heated glance Solas had tried to conceal as she stepped out of the carriage that she looked good.

The dress was off the shoulder and pulled tightly around her waist before falling in straight pleats to the ground. It left her back bare, and Shepard felt that some of her best scars were on display. Varric had apparently compensated for her lack of cleavage by tying a gold silk ribbon around her neck. Cassandra had offered her a small dagger with an ornamental thigh sheath “for luck,” but Shepard had reminded her that she wasn’t getting married, just going to a party. “An Orlesian party,” said Cassandra darkly.

For a moment, as she entered, Shepard felt a familiar lump form in her stomach. She hated parties. She never knew what to do or say, and she usually spent the entire time ferrying drinks to people standing on the edges of crowds. Tonight offered the twin possibilities of social exclusion and Chantry assassins, to boot.

Luckily, however, the duke’s reception hall had been built with defense in mind, and offered few shadowy alcoves where assassins might lurk. Side tables laden with canapés offered the possibility of being overturned and used as cover. Shepard relaxed a hair and loaded a small plate with tiny crackers covered in some kind of herbed pate.

She managed to get reasonably full (heavy hors-d’oeuvres were not really dinner, regardless of what this or any other world thought) while simply reacting to the waves of Orlesian nobles who approached her to ask her questions, offer support, or even just be seen with her.

She thought she’d convinced at least one noble with some military background to join them in Haven- an elderly woman in mauve lace introduced herself as a retired chevalier before launching into a lengthy description of some kind of arbalest she had designed- but she had still not seen the duke or his mistress, their apparent hosts that evening.

Shepard had just discovered a plate of roast figs stuffed with blue cheese, to her joy, when she was accosted by an unshaven man stinking of brandy and too much verbena cologne.

Shepard wondered whether she was going to have enough time to finish chewing her fig before she had to squish him, and whether it was considered impolite to fight with her mouth full in Orlais.

Before Shepard had to do more than quirk an eyebrow at the lout gracelessly attempting to jostle his rapier free of his shoulder sheath, he was flash-frozen where he stood.

The woman in silver brocade slinking down the grand staircase was every cool girl who had never given Shepard the time of day. From the moment she opened her mouth to disparage the drunken prat’s brains, courage, manners, and liquidity- all in two sentences or less- Shepard was transported back to her schoolroom on Mindoir, where she’d had too many angles and elbows, and not enough witty retorts.

Her cheekbones were better than Shepard’s cheekbones. Her dress was better than Shepard’s dress. Her stasis effect was better than Shepard’s stasis effect. Shepard probably still had her on galaxies saved, she consoled herself.

“Now, what should I do with our dear Marquis?” she purred.

Shepard sensed this was a test. She had no idea what the correct answer was.

“I suppose you could prop him on the sideboard and serve cold appetizers on him,” she said slowly. “But that seems unsanitary.”

Madame Vivienne laughed like silver bells ringing.

“Perish the thought! He would turn my color scheme on its nose.”

She snapped her fingers, the poor man coughed until the pink returned to his face, and the guests parted to flank his ignominious retreat.

Vivienne wiggled her fingers at Shepard, and Shepard obligingly trailed up the grand marble staircase behind her.

She was led to a tastefully casual grouping of cream mohair-upholstered armchairs on the second floor. They could see the dance floor below, but not be seen. Vivienne daintily handed Shepard a small crystal flute of clear liquor from a tray on an ornate mirrored glass side-table. When Shepard spied the grouping of dark crimson lilies arranged next to the tray, she had the dim realization that everything this night had proceeded according to Vivienne’s plan. She didn’t know whether to be angry or impressed.

Vivienne smiled at her, and Shepard decided that she’d rather feel impressed.

“Evelyn Trevelyan,” Vivienne said silkily. “That is a fine old Marcher name. But I have so many dear friends in the Circles in Ostwick and Starkhaven, and I am certain I would have heard of a mage of your talents there. You cannot possibly have come from that dreadful situation at Kirkwall?”

Vivienne’s tones conveyed nothing but honest sympathy, but Shepard felt that if she answered incorrectly, she might find herself the next sushi display-block. Shepard sipped her drink to give herself a moment to compose her answer. The liquor was very good, and tasted faintly of gooseberries.

“I’m afraid that regardless of what you may have heard, First Enchanter, I am not a mage. The magic I have was granted in whatever unknown events led to the Breach, but it does not compare to your talents. It seems to be good only for closing rifts and lighting my way to the head at night.”

Vivienne hummed and regarded her straight in the eyes.

“A very careful answer, and much more appealing than admitting to apostasy, but I’m afraid, my dear, that too many people have seen you throw bandits about with your mind for that answer to work much longer. You will need to formulate a new one.”

“Oh that,” said Shepard. “That’s not magic. That’s just my biotics. They let me manipulate mass effect fields. I can change an object’s force, mass, and velocity. Even rig up something like a barrier. But nothing like a real mage can do.”

“I don’t doubt that, my dear. I’ve heard you travel with some manner of elven hedge wizard. You would hardly have been exposed to an opportunity to improve yourself if you had never been properly trained. If the mages in your country are as limited as you say, you should see the marvels that a properly educated Circle mage can perform.”

A Circle mage like you, Shepard thought. So that’s where this was going.

Shepard stalled while she thought about that.

“I’m afraid no amount of training could turn me into a mage like yourself, First Enchanter. My people are relative novices to the use of biotics, and I’m only middling even by the standards of the Alliance Navy, but even asari commandoes couldn’t use biotics to generate that cryo effect you just hit the Marquis with.”

“Have you even tried?” Vivienne asked, her head tilted like a predatory bird’s. She set her glass gently aside. She held up one finger, and went into a nearby room for a brief moment. When she returned, she held an empty brass bowl and a sheet of blank writing paper. She sat back down next to Shepard, and tore the paper into tiny strips at the bottom of the bowl.

“This is a test we used on new apprentices in Wycome if they could not manifest their magic,” she said. “I would like you to get angry at the paper. Imagine it absorbing your anger.”

Shepard laughed. “Madame Vivienne, of all the things that have offended me recently, that paper is without fault.”

Vivienne raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you afraid to even try?”

Shepard put her glass away and attempted to humor her. She could, of course, have made the paper float. Perhaps even crushed the pieces together, though that kind of control was likely to elude her and perhaps crush the bowl besides.

So she stared at the scraps. Angry. Bad paper. Reaper paper. Indoctrinated Cerberus paper.

“Come along now, dear, we don’t have all night.”

Shepard looked at Vivienne’s knowing smile and was suddenly furious. Furious at every misstep she’d made since waking up in Leliana’s dungeon. Furious at these people who had reinvented racism, forgotten sanitation, and given up the stars. Angry at magic for existing, for monsters being real, and at the Reapers for taking everything, everyone…

The paper went up in a two-foot column of flame. Vivienne hastily dropped the bowl and smothered the flames with a wave of icy wind.

“Fuck me,” Shepard said dumbly. Vivienne did not even flicker an eyelid.

“I must regretfully decline,” she said gracefully. “Now, as we have established your native abilities, I must say that was very good. A little overly enthusiastic, but as you have apparently been using your magic for years in your own stunted way, I should have expected a good showing. I’m sure you’ll be an excellent student.”

Shepard closed her mouth from where she’d been gaping at Vivienne and the bowl of blackened scraps.

“I think, Madame Vivienne, it would be best if you joined the Inquisition,” she said, still a bit numb.

“Of course, my dear. I’m already packed. I’ll have my servants start conveying my things to Haven.”

* * *

Beyond informing her companions that the First Enchanter would be joining them back at Haven, Shepard did not tell them what had transpired at the fete. It was not like developing biotics at age 17. It was more like the moment Shepard had touched the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime and reached an understanding nobody alive could share.

It was her age, Shepard thought. Your identity was supposed to be set before you hit 32. Wasn’t it? And was she 32, anyway? Should she count the years she was dead? What about the time between shooting out the Citadel hub and waking up in Thedas?

32, she thought firmly. She remembered 32 years, give or take a few spent mastering the art of bipedal locomotion.

Tedium was a constant, to a soldier, but staring at the tail of the horse in front of her for the interminable kilometers back to Haven was a fresh hell. Shepard fiddled a bit with her omni-tool, and was pleased to discover a large music library was available, even without a network connection. Impulsively, she made a nostalgic choice, and readjusted herself in her saddle while she let the music sweep into the imbedded transmitters in her inner ear.

She must have been mouthing the words, because she heard Sera mutter sotto voce to Cassandra, “Your Herald’s a bit touched, and not just by the Maker, yeah?”

Shepard opened her eyes and pretended to glare at them. “I heard that.”

“Well don’t have the guy upstairs smite me. I’m still hungover and prob’ly flammable. Burn down all these lovely trees and stuff,” Sera said, not at all abashed.

“I’m listening to music on my omni-tool. Want me to set it so you can hear it too?”

“Yeah!” Sera said enthusiastically. She had been asking Shepard to “glow” for her, and Shepard wasn’t sure if that was a euphemism or just a request for her to do something miraculous.

So Shepard, wondering again if she was violating some kind of reg against exposing pre-spaceflight cultures to too mush tech, switched her omni-tool to broadcast and sent Mozart streaming through the forests of eastern Orlais, for possibly the first time. Pre-spaceflight? Post-spaceflight? Someone should have briefed her.

Solas had been riding point, but when the music started, he pulled up to fall back alongside Shepard.

His expression could have been of either pain or pleasure, but he listened intently until the aria concluded.

“Extraordinary,” he murmured. “That was a human piece?”

“Sort of. It’s a Mozart aria, Der Hölle Rache. From several centuries before I was born. But the singer is Salarian. He was a prodigy, could sing in several ranges. The orchestra was mixed-species, very popular on the Citadel.”

“Play it again?” he asked, quietly.

Shepard restarted it.

“This was the favorite of one of my XOs. Miranda. She liked to play it on the way to a mission. Said it engaged the mind and the biotics,” Shepard said.

“What is the singer saying?” Solas asked.

“Oh, I forget nobody else has a UI,” Shepard said, frowning.

“Pardon?”

“A universal translator. It’s an implant that lets me pick up new languages, speak them once I’ve had enough exposure. Standard. One sec. Ok, the character is the Queen of the Night, and she is trying to convince her daughter to kill an evil priest. She’s saying,

‘Hell's vengeance boils in my heart;
Death and despair blaze around me!
For if Sarastro feels not the pain of death through thee,
Thence shall thou be my daughter nevermore.’”

“I can understand why you listened to this before missions,” Cassandra said drily from the horse ahead of them.

“I’ve heard Orlesian opera,” Sera said, squirming around to sit backwards on her patient pony, hands bracing herself on its rump. “I snuck in to the rafters at a show in Val Royeaux once, listened to the second half. It sounded like a bunch of sick birds dying of being sat on. Your stuff’s better.”

Shepard smiled at her crookedly. “It’s an acquired taste for me too. Believe me, the farm kids back on Mindoir weren’t trading their favorite Puccini clips.”

“Yeah? What did you listen to? Can you make another one sing?” Sera said, interested.

Shepard thought a minute, and called up an old favorite of her father’s. She hadn’t listened to it in- oh, it must have been 18 years, plus or minus a few intervening eons, but she thought it might make a nice contrast with the Mozart, if she was to bookend human culture in two songs.

When the opening bass guitar squeal sparked from her wrist, Shepard’s long-suffering mount danced a little and flicked his ears back in confusion. She had to lunge forward to grab onto the pommel of the horse. The damn thing handled worse than the Mako.

Sera laughed long and loud. “I like it! I don’t know what the fuck he’s saying, but I like it!” Shepard gave Solas a side-long grin, and he gave a little defeated laugh, though his eyes remained shadowed.

After they’d enjoyed “Sabotage,” to varying degrees, Shepard commenced the musical education of the Inquisition, beginning with Mozart, continuing with rock and roll (from Fats Domino to the Dramaxeens), and concluding with a selection from Excel 10, although Shepard warned them that without the sensory effects, they’d be missing most of the experience.

Cassandra reluctantly called a halt as it grew dark.

“It is truly a wonder, Shepard! Some of it sounded very romantic.” Her expression was wistful. “Do your people write books as well?”

Shepard grinned at her. “If you liked that, you should see the vids that are on here. We’ll have a girls’ day and watch Fleet and Flotilla.”

Solas was busy piling up dead wood and setting it on fire by glaring at it.

He’d been quiet throughout the afternoon’s musical performance. He’d occasionally interposed a question about the species of the performer or the instrument, or requested a translation of a chorus, but otherwise offered no opinion.

Shepard unrolled her saddle blanket next to his spot by the fire. They were each leaning back on a dry log edging their campground. The night was warmer and clear- nobody had bothered to pitch tents.

“Did you like it, Solas?” she asked casually, although, as she thought about it, his impression was suddenly important in a way she couldn’t articulate.

“Yes,” he said shortly.

“That’s it? You just liked it in general?”

He rolled slightly to his side to face her.

“I liked that you have it with you. I liked the idea of all of your people, wherever they went, carrying the best of themselves with them at their fingertips.”

Shepard smiled. “That’s a good way to look at it.”

“I have seen musical performances from ancient Arlathan lingering in the Fade because spirits of wisdom and devotion gathered to see the best of the People perform,” he said. “But I may be the last person to see them. After me, they will be gone,” he said.

“You should try to form a musical group. Write the songs down,” Shepard suggested.

“When we are not riding through a forest, dodging bandits, and attempting to prevent a world-ending catastrophe?” he asked, facetiously.

“Sure, in your free time,” Shepard said, refusing to be baited.

Solas rolled to his back again and looked up at the sparks of their fire vanishing into the dark branches above them.

“Unfortunately, I can’t carry a tune. I will have to find some other way to contribute,” he said, lacing his hands over his stomach.

Shepard rolled away from him and matched his position.

“Can you tell me about magic, Solas?” she said.

“No.”

“Solas, I’m pretty sure that’s your assigned role in this team,” Shepard reminded him.

“What I mean is that I cannot tell you about magic any more than you could have told me about the music you played. It does not translate between mediums. You can observe its effects, extrapolate certain laws, but not talk about it, any more than you could talk about seeing to a blind man.”

Shepard nodded.

“But where does it come from? Why do some people have it, but other people don’t?”

Solas paused, but seemed driven to explain.

“A mage has a relationship with the Fade, and can draw upon it to impose his will in this physical world,” he said. “The Fade is understood as a realm driven by intention, and this world as one driven by action. Magic, as we understand it, is the tangent between action and intention.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Solas,” Shepard said.

“I told you it would not,” he said, a trifle too smugly for her liking.

“So how do some people not have any magic? Cassandra seems pretty intent and active, but she doesn’t have magic,” Shepard said.

“She can connect to the Fade. All humans do, in their dreams,” Solas said.

“But no magic?”

“Some innate ability is required to manipulate the Fade,” Solas said. “All elves once had the ability, but it grows rarer. And no dwarf has ever manipulated the Fade, although they handle lyrium, which seems to be concentrated mana, able to give even non-mages certain magical abilities, such as the Templars.”

“Could it be eezo?” Shepard asked him.

“Pardon?”

“Element zero. We didn’t have any on Earth, until we reached the Prothean Archives on Mars. So no human biotics. Accidental exposures, like my mother’s, gave some human kids biotic abilities. Some planets have lots of eezo, like Thessia. That’s why asari are all biotics.”

“I could not follow that, Shepard.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

She rolled back over towards him. “I think this planet might have high levels of naturally occurring eezo. Off the charts. I think it might be more bio-available than the forms we had.”

Solas shook his head. “I can’t even begin to imagine how I would prove or disprove that hypothesis, Shepard.”

“Ok,” she said simply.

“Why the sudden curiosity?” he asked, with a bit of restrained hostility. “You had been content to simply ‘squish’ our opponents, as you put it, without engaging with our native power systems.”

Shepard hesitated to answer. Solas had not, after all, been forthcoming about the possibility of her being able to mimic his magic. But she had observed that the potential abilities of ‘humans’ like herself were not a natural topic of consideration for him, at least until she rubbed it in his face, like with her music.

“Because of this,” she said, and she sent a surge of emotion into producing a single wisp of flame above her fingers.

“I see,” he said, controlling any emotion from leaking into his voice. His face was closed, and he resolutely looked at the trees, not Shepard.

Shepard sighed, and fluffed her blanket’s folds into the semblance of a pillow behind her head. She rolled to her other side, away from him.

She was almost asleep when she heard Solas ask,

“Shepard? Can you sing? Play one of those instruments?”

She snorted indelicately.

“No. Voice like two asthmatic goats fucking. Fingers like sausages.”

Solas laughed softly. “Well, that’s something, at least.”

Chapter Text

Solas found inaction to be excruciating. Ghilan’nain had teased him once that he was only still when he slept, and even then, he was just squirming around in the Fade. He knew that travel was not idleness, and that Cassandra set a reasonable pace, but to confine himself to the pace of Shepard’s lazy horse was a torment to he who had once stepped across Elvhenan in the blink of a thought.

Anger and sorrow shot through him in equal parts as he thought of Felassan and the eluvian network.

He would not have shared the eluvians with the Inquisition in any event, not without truly pressing need.

Until today, he’d been left to simply stare down the road ahead of them and brood on his many current tasks, future problems, and past failures. Truly, he was his own worst company during the day.

But at night, he could continue to advance his causes past, present, and future.

They were close enough to Haven that he could check on his agents, and he stepped delicately into the dream of the putative Rogelan, who was more commonly known as Nettie to the Inquisition spies whose clothing she washed.

Nettie was a small, grey person who had led a small, grey life. Solas had stumbled upon her dreams of her dead brother, slain many decades ago by Orlesian chevaliers as they pursued a thief bearing no more than a passing resemblance to the lad.

Nettie had long quietly nurtured the small hope of someday putting it back to the shems- a hope Solas had been fanning into flame over the past couple of months since Nettie had become attached to the Inquisition by her employer, a minor Fereldan bann who served as an agent of the Chantry.

Solas approached her in his form as the proud wolf, the Pride of the People.

Nettie was dreaming of fishing on a rainy day in an overflowing drainage ditch on the outskirts of Highever. Her brother, forever fifteen, was focused on casting his line in, despite the bloody wound bisecting his face. Nettie was focused on the spirit of despair currently acting out her defining tragedy, and she did not see Fen’harel pad up behind her.

Solas came to sit next to her, a natural part of her dream.

“Lord Fen’harel, have you come for the fishing too?” she asked, without curiosity. “Bowe’s caught three of the big’uns with red gills already, he’ll share if you like.”

The spirit turned to look at Solas. Bowe’s jaw hung half off his face. Solas could see white bone and broken teeth sliding at an angle away from his skull.

“No thank you, Nettie,” Solas said, as gently as he could. “Despair has no appeal for me.”

The demon shifted, as did the dream.

“You say that like we are strangers, Pride,” said the form of Felassan. “When we are such very good friends.” They now stood in the ruins of a small concert hall. Rain dripped in where the strings section had played, and small animals nested in the audience pews. Felassan watched him with glittering eyes, soaking in Solas’ discomfort.

Solas lost patience with the demon, and shoved himself and Nettie away from the demon’s construct. It was not like him to allow a demon to set the stage for any discussion. He was distracted tonight.

Nettie did not register any confusion at the change of scenery or the disappearance of her ‘brother,’ although they now stood in the vestibule of the Haven chantry.

“It has been a long and confusing day,” he confided to Nettie, who only blinked at him mildly.

“Aye, and a busy ‘un at that,” she agreed.

“I would enjoy hearing about your day,” he said to her, with simple kindness. He raised himself off his haunches. “Can tell me what you saw?”

“As you like,” she said, indifferent. “I thought I was supposed to be strippin’ the beds at the southern cabins, on account of there bein’ a new Templar, and Orly always likes me to change out all the bedding, when there’s a new one, so that nobody goes so long without a fresh change, do ye see? But then, I got all the way down there with the new pillow-covers, more than twenty of them, and I see Brooker there instead, and he sends me right back up to the Chantry, and what a waste that was. It’s not as though I can just go mixing the Templar pillow-covers with the ones for Her Ladyship- the Her Antivan Ladyship. Templar pillow-covers are white, do you see. Her Ladyship prefers red.”

Even people could try his patience too, at times.

He was fairly certain that if he were to visit Nettie in the flesh as a large, six-eyed white wolf she would be more choosy in the details she chose to report.

He tried to extricate the sole possibly useful detail from her mess of pillow-talk.

“A new Templar arrived? Alone?”

“Yes, but he won’t be staying with His Lordship Lord Cullen, no. Her Ladyship Leliana had ‘im put in the cells on account of what he was bellowin’ about the Herald when he came in.” Nettie paused, and then prepared to tell him about the dastardly Orlesian washerwomen she had spent the afternoon feuding with.

Solas gritted his metaphorical teeth, and asked Nettie simply to continue with her description of the Templar’s arrest.

“He said the Lady Herald is a malificar, and a murderess, and a dangerous apostate, and he was going to say more, but Her Ladyship’s man knocked him over the head with a sack o’ coal and she had ‘im drug off. So he’s all kitted out down under the Chantry, instead of the southern cabins, and I had to go up and down those stairs about ten times getting his bed made up an’ his things brought down to him.”

“I need you to focus. Please. Did he have anything unusual in his personal effects, Nettie?”

Nettie blinked her watery blue eyes at him.

“I thought you wanted to call me Rogelan,” she said, making eye contact with him for the first time that dreaming.

His breath rushed out of him and he put his face down on his front paws.

“Rogelan, yes. Ma seranna ma, Rogelan.”

Nettie’s dignity was satisfied. She rearranged the folds of her dream-dress, and told him.

“He had a queer little box with ‘im. No catch on it, an’ too fine a make for a mage-chaser like ‘im. So I put it aside for you, just as you asked,” she said.

“Ma melava halani, lethallan,” he told her, nosing at her hand with his soft face. She smiled, and ran a hand through his fur, and he guided her out of the Chantry into a dream, a true dream, of soft rain on green fields, and her brother walking beside her with his face healed and whole.

* * *

Cullen was not sure how he could have foreseen that his day would go this pear-shaped. Every night he made it a point to schedule out the next day in quarter-candlemark increments. Next to each entry on his calendar, he would try to anticipate the annoyances, insults, and outright disasters that might occur while he attempted to complete his daily tasks. Next to “inspect uniform compliance,” for example, he had noted that some soldiers might have lost or traded away their green hoods. The green hoods were not popular. As a response, he had noted that additional hoods were on backorder and he could direct the sergeants to dock pay or use physical discipline to encourage compliance with the uniform regulations.

He would not take lyrium if the inspection failed. He would not take lyrium if the stables had not been cleaned out. He would not take lyrium if the shipments of wheat from Highever had not arrived. He had contingencies. He had a schedule that did not include taking lyrium, and it was filled in from the moment he woke to the moment he passed out at his desk from exhaustion. (Between 2300 and 0230, depending. The schedule had some flexibility built in.).

His schedule today had provided for a two-to-three hour meeting with the Herald. He intended to update her on his progress in supplying and safeguarding a true peacekeeping force capable of occupying and securing territory. He had been reading. He had taken her instructions to heart. He had been imagining how his report would go since she left for Val Royeaux.

With Josephine’s help, I have established supply chains with Highever, Halamshiral, and Honnleath, he would tell her.

And have you hardened them? She would ask.

Of course, he would tell her. I have been making all necessary supply orders redundant, in the event of contingencies.

Well done, she would tell him.

It is my honor to serve, he would reply. Would you like to inspect those latrines- no, of course not, that’s idiotic, Rutherford. Would you like to examine the new fortifications? She would give him that little frown, and tell him that she wouldn’t want to impose on his schedule. It is no imposition, he would tell her. Perhaps she would care to join him on his daily jog around the outside of the perimeter. Perhaps she would like to review some of the training reports he received, and suggest improvements. Perhaps-

Perhaps she had better not kill Leliana, he thought, when the meeting went to shit.

Leliana had decided to casually drop upon the rest of the War Council that she was holding a Templar who had had some altercation with Shepard before the Breach in the cells below the Chantry, and was planning to interrogate him alone.

Shepard had decided that it would be much better, not to mention more likely to result in the transmission of any resulting information to Shepard, if Shepard handled the interrogation.

Leliana demurred. Shepard insisted. Leliana suggested that Shepard was perhaps not to be trusted in this particular. Shepard suggested that Leliana could ‘sit on it and spin.’

It decompensated from there.

The two women were screaming at each other, and Shepard was beginning to glow faintly blue. Josephine had plastered herself against the back wall. Cassandra was edging towards the door and likely towards the two smite-capable Templars stationed in the next room.

Cullen would rather have taken lyrium than dealt with this. And not because he felt the need to smite anyone.

But instead of taking lyrium, he put his thumb and forefinger in his mouth, and used the whistle that his father had used to summon Rutherford children and dogs alike into the house at dinnertime.

“Ladies! If you please!” he said firmly.

Leliana looked at him with her mouth in a little ‘o’ of surprise. Shepard had her hands clapped over her ears as though they pained her.

“I understand your concerns,” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “Perhaps the best solution is that I will go and talk to the man? He will likely recognize my authority as a former Knight-Captain, and perhaps the Herald will agree that I am unable to plan anything untoward with whatever information the man gives me.”

That compromise proved acceptable, and so Cullen was dispatched into the dank, cold dungeon to speak to the new prisoner.

He reported to the man’s cell with a torch, but the fellow had already been given a number of candles, as well as the most comfortable furnishings Haven was able to provide. Cullen was glad to see the Templar had not been abused, at any rate, but he could tell from the man’s restless pacing and trembling fingers that he had not been provided with any lyrium.

Cullen set the torch in the ring outside the cell and pulled out his notebook. He did not employ the candleholder Josephine used- he did not understand how she was not constantly setting her notes aflame.

“Hail, ser,” Cullen said as he approached. “I am Commander Rutherford, formerly Knight-Captain of Kirkwall.” The man had not made use of the basin of water provided, and his longish black hair clung slickly to his skull. His eyes were red, and his cheeks showed a few weeks growth of beard.

“You survived Kirkwall!” the man gasped. “Then you know. You have to kill them. Do it now, before more turn!” His fingers gripped the iron bars of the cell. “Let me out, get me some dust, and I’ll help you. I’ve been on the road for days, but I can still fight.”

His words were an uncomfortable mirror of the whispers in Cullen’s dreams.

He shook his head, face hardening.

“I am here to ask you some questions about Jane Shepard, also known as the Herald,” he said. “I understand that you encountered her shortly before the Divine was killed and the Breach tore open the sky.”

The man nodded, urgently. “My name’s Ser Denton. I’m from Amaranthine, and I was assigned to the Diarsmuid Circle. After we put down the rebellion there, I marched south with Knight-Sergeant Paolo. We were close to the Conclave when we saw a fireball come down over the hill not two leagues from the road. We went to investigate, of course, and that’s when we saw the maleficar coming out of her Tevinter artifact.”

“Tevinter?” said Cullen. “How did you know it was Tevinter? What kind of artifact?”

“Dunno, I guess, isn’t everything that’s big and made of unnatural magic from Tevinter? It was a big thing. Bigger than five carts put together. Made of metal. The maleficar was standing in some kind of door, and she was glowing.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, the Knight-Sergeant said he’d take her into custody and bring her along to the Conclave. Either we’d decide to get the Circles back up and running, or we’d annul them all, and either way we’d have it finished at the Conclave.”

“Wonderful,” said Cullen, flatly. “I suppose your attempts to take her into custody didn’t go well?”

“Eh, it was alright at first. She was kind of staggering along, and Ser Milton was thinking he could just bind up her hands. But then she started glowing blue again, and that’s when she started tossing people around like dice. The Knight-Sergeant yelled at me to run back off to Kinloch and get reinforcements, so I got going pretty quick. We were all taking a lot of the dust, but the smites just weren’t working on her. She must be an abomination already.”

Cullen sighed. It wasn’t that the man’s thinking was entirely foreign to him, but it was the kind of thinking that would have prevented the Conclave from ever succeeding.

“When was the last time you saw her?” Cullen asked the Templar.

“Last I saw her, she’d got the rope around Ser Milton’s neck, and she was marching him off towards the Conclave, babbling in some kind of demon language. Like I said, I scarpered off quick. For reinforcements,” he added quickly.

“Right,” said Cullen. “Which is why you wandered into Haven alone, yesterday, drunk as a king and raving at the top of your lungs.”

“Kinloch Hold was empty,” Ser Denton said with gritted teeth. “Templars are gone to Therinfall Redoubt. But I know my duty. I came to warn you. She’s a killer. She’ll kill you all.”

“Very possibly,” Cullen sighed. “Some of us sooner than others.”

He convinced the man to draw him a map to where he had encountered Shepard, as well as what he claimed was a good likeness of the ‘Tevinter’ artifact she was with.

Cullen reported back to the War Council and ordered that under no circumstances was the man to be given any lyrium.

Shepard was eager to travel to the location Ser Denton had identified, and absentmindedly thanked Cullen for his assistance.

He stuttered a little when he asked her if she would like to help him inspect the latrines.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t the Normandy. If Shepard had been honest with herself, she would have said that she knew in her heart it wasn’t the Normandy. Which was ridiculous. You knew things based upon evidence, not “heart,” and it was the evidence- if Shepard’s faulty memories could have been called evidence- that said that Joker’s crazy battle-field pick-up of Garrus and James was the last she had seen of the Normandy. Or would ever see, if she were going to be really, really honest with herself.

Enough of that. It was the first piece of machinery Shepard had seen on this benighted colony that hadn’t been cobbled together by a part-time farrier, and even a spaceship that had apparently seen some shit was still one more spaceship than Shepard had woken up with.

It wasn’t a big spaceship, and it wasn’t an Alliance spaceship. Shepard had taken only Solas and Vivienne with her when she approached, since she wanted everyone with her to have the advantage of some kind of shielding. She wasn’t sure if magic barriers stopped eezo radiation, but they stopped lighting bolts and fireballs, so they were definitely better than nothing.

The rest of the active team, along with Commander Cullen and a small contingent of “ex”-Templars stood about half a click back from the ship. It wasn’t smoking, although patches in the snow still showed scorch marks.

Shepard’s omni-tool reported no radiation leaks. She waved at Cullen, and motioned Solas and Vivienne closer to the ship.

It was small- not much bigger than a shuttle- but Shepard could tell from the shape of the tail section that it carried an eezo core for FTL travel. The hull of the ship was pitted to hell and a little scorched besides, but she could still faintly see its original paint colors. Robins-egg blue and white. The Andromeda Initiative. Shepard was looking forward to figuring out what that was, although she had a strong hunch.

Solas circled the ship and called out to her. The idiot was kneeling in the snow in his bare feet again, scooping the snow away from the side of the ship.

“I believe I see the ship’s name. The…Viking,” he said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not in particular,” Shepard said. “The Vikings were explorers. Also raiders. Pirates. Hard to tell what sense it was named for. I don’t see any offensive capability on the ship, so probably the first one.”

The interior of the craft was dark and silent. Shepard instinctively palmed the right side of the airlock panel for lights. Only emergency floor ribbon lights activated, flashing. Shepard thought about activating the flashlight function on her omni-tool, then decided to simply let her eyes adjust.

The passenger cabin was almost empty. Almost.

Shepard saw the stasis pod propped open against the back wall and groaned. She knew that stasis pod. She’d pulled it out of a dig site on Eden Prime in the middle of a Cerberus firefight. And she knew who had confiscated that pod.

“Goddamn it, Liara,” she said. “Really?”

She slammed the side of her fist against the wall, mind racing.

“Shepard?” Vivienne’s voice drifted in from outside. “Is it safe to enter?”

“Safe enough,” said Shepard, sourly. She felt around for a control panel, and engaged her omni-tool.

Low power mode, reported the VI. Solar cells obstructed.

Shepard brushed past Vivienne and stuck her head out the airlock.

“Cullen!” she yelled. “Get some guys up on top of this thing to brush the snow off.”

She directed the VI to draw power from her omni-tool.

The display brightened.

“Welcome, Evelyn Trevelyan,” it chirped. “Mission complete! How can I help you today.”

“You can tell me what the fucking mission was, first off,” Shepard snarled at it.

“Prime directive- convey Evelyn Trevelyan to Andromeda Initiative rendezvous.”

“Oh yeah? Is this my rendezvous? With vous was I supposed to rendez?” Shepard said.

“Prime directive- error,” it said, equally cheerfully. No kidding. “Secondary directive, convey Evelyn Trevelyan to nearest secure human colony. Mission complete.”

Shepard let out a shuddering sigh. “Ok. Now we’re getting somewhere. Which colony is this?”

“Messier object 31.48956d,” it told her.

“Catchy,” said Shepard. “I’m sure they sell timeshares with that name.” She put her palm against her forehead and closed her eyes to consider her next line of inquiry.

“We’re in the Andromeda galaxy, aren’t we,” she said.

“Correct!” it chirped.

“What year is this, common era?” she asked at last.

“12648,” it told her.

Shepard found herself leaning heavily against the cool synthetic material of the wall. Vivienne and Solas had stepped carefully into the compartment behind her, and were watching her with concern.

“Did you get that,” she said hoarsely.

“I’m afraid not,” Solas said. “You two weren’t speaking Common. Is it a spirit?”

“A VI. A virtual intelligence. Programmed by people to answer questions. It can’t really think for itself.”

“Like a wisp,” Solas said.

Sure.

Shepard pushed herself off the wall and glared at the VI again.

“Why did Liara T’Soni send me here?” she demanded. “What is the Andromeda Initiative?”

“Error,” said the VI. “Parameters not found. Structural and mnemonic damage reported. Rendezvous with Nexus required.”

“Can you even tell me what happened?” Shepard demanded. “Where is the Normandy? What happened to the Citadel? Were the Reapers destroyed? The mass relays? What happened to the Milky Way?!”

The little lambda i sigil on the control screen whirred for a moment.

“Error,” said the VI. “Parameters not found. Structural and mnemonic damage reported. Rendezvous with Nexus required.”

Shepard slammed her fist against the wall again. Percussive maintenance. Just like a grunt.

The remainder of the ship yielded no further information. The eezo core was so depleted as to be nearly slag. There were no personal items anywhere aboard. She would need to run more tests, but the controls seemed to be in good working order. It was fixable, even navigable, but could not be repaired without tools, refined eezo, and expertise. None of which Shepard had.

Liara should have left a note. Liara would have left a note. Liara would have had a reason for marooning her on a human colony in Andromeda.

Vivienne was noticeably uncomfortable, and was doing her best not to touch anything. Solas was inscrutable as ever, but was poking around the cabin, and paying especial attention to the stasis pod. Shepard was unable to extract any other useable information from the VI even after another half an hour of attempts. There was nothing else Shepard could do here, for the time being. She would secure the ship and ponder how she would get it working again.

“So guys,” Shepard told Solas and Vivienne. “Let’s get the team together. I have a preliminary report. I’m not dead and you’re probably not hallucinations.”

* * *

Shepard had left Solas behind for this run to the Hinterlands. Leliana wanted Shepard to investigate a Grey Warden recruiter and make contact with the mage rebellion. The services of an elven apostate were not necessary to either of those objectives, he had informed her. She’d blinked at him, a bit startled- he gathered that she was accustomed to making personnel decisions, and did not necessarily appreciate the personnel offering staffing suggestions themselves.

Solas wasn’t sure everyone would survive a trip that included himself, Sera, and Madame Vivienne. Well. He was certain he would survive, but Shepard was growing attached to the Circle mage as she studied her emerging magical abilities and he didn't want to risk other casualties.

He’d never had any occasion to tutor a young mage, anyway. Shepard could teethe on someone else’s staff.

In truth, he wanted some time alone with the box his agent had recovered from the Templar. He resolutely squashed a pang of conscience. Keeping this from a human he’d known a scant few months would barely register on the list of his greatest betrayals.

He kept them all, though. He would remember every single one.

Alone in his cabin, wrapped in every ward he’d ever learned waking or in the Fade, he gently lifted the lid of the box. The box contained a single ball of light.

A wisp, he immediately thought. No, what had Shepard called it? A virtual intelligence?

The VI spun.

“Greetings,” it told him. “Password, please.” The words were in Common, oddly enough.

Solas sat back on his haunches. What had Shepard said to her wrist that day in the woods? Did he dare? Could he remember what she had said?

“I’m Commander Shepard and this is my favorite store on the Citadel,” he said, his mouth forming the strange sounds awkwardly. That was correct.

“Password accepted. Greetings. I am Glyph. How may I assist you?” It asked him.

Solas wondered that himself.

“Who are you, Glyph?” he asked.

“I am the virtual assistant to Jane Shepard,” it said.

“And what can you do?” Solas inquired.

“I have many intelligence-gathering, data analysis, covert surveillance, and combat functions,” it reported.

Excellent, he thought.

“Tell me about Jane Shepard,” he told it.

“Time limit?” Glyph requested.

Solas settled back in his bed.

“I have all night,” he said.

* * *

Solas finally shut the box shortly before dawn. There was so much to learn. How did creatures with lifetimes bare multiples of modern humans- 200 years, according to Glyph- master the abilities Glyph had shown him? Soaring through the skies on ships of metal and energy? Speaking to each other instantly across infinite distances? Building cities that floated among the stars?

Arlathan had touched the skies with the help of magic, the support of spirits, and the power contained in the blood of thousands of slaves. These humans- if they truly were humans- had done more without any magic at all, if the VI was to be believed.

And Shepard! Glyph had projected scenes of her life before him as though Solas were watching a memory in the Fade. Shepard had been her people’s greatest hero.
He saw her face down a giant creature formed of dark metal and malice on foot. He saw her leap from a crumbling ship across the void. He watched her touch the face of a reptilian creature clothed in black leather, and smile.

He saw her die. He saw her reborn. He saw her victorious as she destroyed her people’s greatest enemy- the Reapers she had spoken of. He saw her scream imprecations at her people’s alien leaders. He saw her very young, covered in blood and shivering, eyes staring at nothing. He saw her shoot a man in the stomach and cradle him as he died. Solas thought he understood her, a little.

“I also have a message for Jane Shepard from Liara T’Soni,” Glyph finally reported.

Liara was the name Shepard had said more than once on the Viking. Solas opened his mouth to ask the VI to play it, but closed it again. He felt that he had cracked open Shepard’s body entire and looked into its depths. He would allow her one secret to balance against the thousands he hoarded for himself.

He closed the black box over the VI, and drew his burlap curtains against the growing light of the dawn. Falling back, exhilarated and exhausted, he sought the Fade and his only real friends.

Wisdom drew close to him as soon as he opened his eyes in his dream of Haven.

“I have so much to tell you, falon,” he said.

* * *

Shepard was subdued when she returned to Haven. Solas could tell she was unimpressed by Warden Blackwall and the mage rebellion alike, but was troubled beyond the time wasted.

“Have you ever heard of anyone going back in time?” she asked him.

Cassandra had given him a short brief of the temporal distortions associated with the Redcliffe rifts. Another new thing to ponder, among all the rest.

“Only going forward, faster or slower,” he said. “The ancient elves entered uthenera to pass many years in the Fade, but time was, as they understood it, a one-way steam with many different currents.”

“My people didn’t believe it was possible, either. Time can pass at different speeds, depending on your speed and perspective, but it only goes in one direction. I thought, anyway,” she said.

“Did you truly see anyone go back in time?” he asked, curiously. She shook her head.

“No, just the kind of distortions I’d associate with relativistic travel,” she said. “But a Tevinter we encountered said that his people were studying some method of time travel.”

Solas had eavesdropped on a conversation between Sera and Varric after their return. Sera had said that the Inquisition party encountered “a ‘vint mage so pretty I would have asked him for a moustache ride, if I were into that kind of thing, you know? I liked his fancy toff clothes, too.” Solas presumed this was a member of the magisterium loose for some reason in the South.

“That kind of magic is extremely dangerous,” he warned Shepard. “It risks tearing the very nature of reality."

Shepard looked pointedly at the sky.

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want any of that to happen, would we.”

Solas recalled that a young human whose gender he had not been immediately able to classify had been looking for someone to talk to about Tevinters on the Storm Coast. If Tevinters were involved in a terrible magical conspiracy- and when were they not? Solas was going to need Shepard to fix it.

He directed Shepard up to the Chantry. As always, she brightened when given a task to complete.

“I’m with the Inquisition,” Shepard authoritatively introduced herself to the mercenary. “You can give me the message.”

When the human finished the report- another Qunari-led company in search of paying work- Shepard stuck out her hand for the human to shake.

“Thanks. What was your name? And your pronouns?”

“Uh, Krem. And I’m a man?” he said, in a tone that expected question more than it questioned itself.

“Ok,” said Shepard simply. “Tell your captain I’ll meet him on the Storm Coast in a week or so.”

She turned to Solas and put her hands on her hips. “You all rested and recreated? Shore leave done? Hit it and quit it?”

“I am at your disposal, Shepard,” he told her, smiling in spite of himself. It was time for him to redouble his efforts in support of closing the Breach, and to put his other goals aside for the moment.

“Fantastic. We’re going to the beach again, bud. I want to hear more about these magic weirdos in fancy dress.” She winked at him.

And Shepard was on mission once again.

* * *

The Storm Coast lived up to its name. It rained incessantly from the time Shepard’s party passed Kinloch Hold. They had been supplied with waxed canvas ponchos for themselves and their horses, but the smell of wet horse and decaying leaves filed their nostrils, and the thick clouds cut off all sense of time.

By the time they made camp on the last night before reaching the shore, all tempers were fraying. Shepard’s temper was especially short.

They’d brought only two large tents with them, as the larger tents provided room to hang clothes to dry over their heads in the evening. Shepard had brought Sera and Cassandra along for this mission, and as long as Sera and Solas remained separated, the hostilities had been kept to a dull roar for most of the trip.

Today, however, Solas had chosen to pick a fight with Cassandra over some niceties of the distinctions between spirits and demons, and Cassandra had taken to caressing the hilt of her axe in a significant way when she looked at Solas.

Thus, after their cold dinner of jerky and questionably preserved dried fruit, Shepard found herself bunking with Solas.

Solas merely rolled out his bedroll, removed his outerwear, and politely bid her a good night before closing his eyes and pulling his forearm over his face to sleep.

Shepard couldn’t sleep. Her body wouldn’t let her.

It wasn’t for lack of exercise. Any notion she’d ever had of the horse doing all the work when traveling via the same had been quickly dispelled. Riding across Thedas was definitely developing muscles, not to mention calluses, in places where Shepard had been unaware that she had places. Moreover, every morning and evening Shepard still rigorously followed her Alliance calisthenics program of push-ups, crunches, and other weight-free exercises.

No, even if her body was adequately exercised, Shepard recognized that she needed more.

Shepard treated her body like the finely honed weapon it was. Regardless of the aura of excess she cultivated on shore leave, Shepard was strict about what she put in her body. She knew what it needed. She was a simple animal, at base, and she knew that her body required regular inputs of food, exercise, fighting, and sex. And one input could only substitute for another for so long.

On this trip, for instance, there had been insufficient fighting. Even bandits didn’t like to maraud in the rain, and it had been days since Shepard had engaged her biotics.

Also, the food was terrible. Even if she was- barely- obtaining sufficient calories by stuffing dried apricot slices down her throat every hour, the rain made preparation of hot food impossible.

And the sex. The lack of it. Shepard couldn’t recall going without for so long since the long, stressful months she had spent carefully charming her way into Kaidan’s pants. (As usual, her thoughts jerked roughly away from the poor, dumb, doomed bastard.)

And so when Shepard heard Solas’ breath turn regular and even, she slid her left palm experimentally down her stomach.

The girls in her secondary school on Mindoir had not had a great deal of sophistication, as befitted a group of no more than fifty teenagers on a remote human colony, but when one clever engineer had developed “the program,” it had spread like wildfire (or a social disease) from omni-tool to omni-tool until it was ubiquitous in her group. “The program” was fairly rudimentary, but it engaged the omni-tool in a pleasing pattern of buzzes and vibrations, and it had been getting the job done for Shepard since she was fifteen years old. Along with her photos, her books, and her music, Shepard had systematically transferred “the program” from omni-tool to omni-tool all the way from Mindoir to the Alliance to the SR-2.

It was not loaded onto her current model. Goddamn it, Liara.

So Shepard found herself trying to get off with nothing more than her left hand and months of pent-up aggression for the first time in almost two decades, and it was not going well. This fucking planet, she thought. Even masturbation was stuck in the stone age.

She thought her last encounter had been with James, the night of the big blow-out at Anderson’s apartment. Or no, had it been that Brit in the rubble of London? What was his name? Coats? Yes, Coats. Any kind of awe he’d felt about screwing Commander Shepard had been burnt out of him by nearly a year chased by death, and he’d efficiently tumbled her in a comms shed before hitting her up for spare ammunition. He’d had a lovely voice, though, and she’d liked the things he said to her as she’d moved below him.

She tried moving her fingers against her clit more vigorously, but release only faded further and further from her reach. Alarmingly, she felt tears of frustration prickle in her eyes.

And then a hard grip circled her wrist. Shepard gasped. She had been so intent on her task that she had not noticed Solas roll over nearly against her back.

He held his grasp on the small bones of her hand, and whispered hot against her ear, “Nobody’s ever taught you how to act, have they?”

Shepard froze, uncertain of whether she was in trouble with him. Solas pulled her hand out of her pants, and up towards them both.

He folded her arm flush against her body, and sucked her two fingertips into his mouth. He reached up behind her with his other arm and wove his free hand into her hair. The pull of his mouth on her fingers was warm and wet, and she felt his sharp little teeth graze the tips of her two fingers and her nails as he pulled them from his mouth. Yes, she was definitely in trouble with him.

Solas covered her hand with his own as he trailed it back over her breasts, her belly, and down into her undergarments.

With his other hand, he pulled back on her hair, drawing her body away from him like a bow.

Were another person doing this, she would have pressed her hips back against them to discover how they felt about the situation, and maybe rut against a thigh or a hard cock. But Solas’ tight grip on her hair kept her from moving back toward his body, and imposed a pressure just short of painful on her body.

Shepard hesitantly moved her fingers on herself under the cover of his hand, gritting her teeth a little. He quickly figured out that she didn’t really know what she was doing and moved her hand to cover a breast and pinch a tight nipple.

He slid his hand back down her body and used his long, clever fingers to draw tiny circles against her. The man might be a homeless wanderer, but he’d clearly seen and done some things before foreswearing all human (elven?) contact. Shepard made a small sound, and he moved her hand from her breast to her mouth.

The message was clear. Silence.

Solas’ fingers deftly explored her clit and folds as Shepard drew closer to completion. When he finally slipped one inside her, she had to bite down on the fleshy part of her hand to stifle a groan.

With one finger rubbing inside her, and his thumb pressing firmly on her clit, Shepard felt the rising effervescent tide of heat rush through her belly and shoulders. His long finger was hitting her in the very best places. Shepard’s inner muscles vibrated against him and around his hand, and she lifted her hand from her mouth so that he could hear her shaky sigh of completion. When the tingles of her orgasm stopped shaking through her body, Shepard felt him pull his hand away from her and delicately brush his fingers off along her soft inner thigh. He gently pulled his hand out of her hair.

Solas finally leaned closer to her, and she felt his warm breath against her face.

“Now go to sleep,” he hissed directly into her ear.

Then he rolled over to put his back to her and covered his head again with a fold of his bedroll.

If it took him any time to compose himself before going back to sleep, Shepard couldn’t see it.

Chapter Text

Solas was a heavy sleeper. He didn’t so much as stir as Shepard awkwardly crawled over him to push her way out of the tent the next morning. It was awkward because he’d made clear that he wasn’t a cuddler, not because Shepard moved with anything less than her usual deadly grace. And she was feeling decidedly more graceful this morning as she launched into the morning routine. The rain had finally let up for a few hours, and Shepard found her new abilities useful for starting a fire out of damp wood.

The fire and resulting thick smoke proved sufficient to both make tea and ward off the hummingbird-sized bugs. While her tea steeped, Shepard launched into her calisthenics routine, which Sera always made sure to be up for.

“You’re…bendy,” Sera said with admiration as Shepard smoothly moved from a handstand to wounded peacock pose.

“Lifetime of training,” Shepard said, shifting again into her warrior pose. Sera blew her a raspberry, which Shepard was fairly certain was Sera’s way of flirting with her. Cassandra emerged next from the other tent, and watched Shepard from a respectful distance with folded arms. She ought to sell tickets to this show, Shepard thought.

When Solas poked his head out of the tent, Shepard paused her movements for just a moment to make eye contact with him. His eyes jerked away from hers as violently as though they’d been magnets of opposite polarity. He immediately retreated into the tent.

Well. It wasn’t the first time that a man, or woman, or genderless alien for that matter had decided that Shepard seemed a lot less alluring in the cold clear light of day. Shepard always did exactly what she wanted to do, but there was no accounting for the poor decisions of others. Shepard had plenty of regrets, but none of them involved letting people see her naked.

Shepard wondered how the first asari to get knocked up by a salarian felt the morning after. Sure, the asari were all about exogamy now, but someone had to have been the first one to take diplomatic relations in hand and resolve, “I’m going to screw that frog-person.” For the good of the galaxy, presumably. It wasn’t like the salarians did romance. Certainly, she’d never seen one flirt.

So maybe she should just thank Solas for giving her a hand, so to speak? Taking one for the team. Shepard definitely felt a lot better this morning. She’d assigned people much worse tasks, anyway. Suicide missions. Extended crawls through boiling Collector tunnels. Guarding Councilor Udina. Taking over the care and feeding of Commander Shepard shouldn’t be considered a hardship.

Nobody had ever explicitly complained about how things had gone down with Shepard naked, anyway. No, if Shepard could figure out how to push a drell’s buttons (metaphorical buttons, because drell were highly aerodynamic in actual anatomy) she was positive she could make it work for one hairless elf.

“Want any tea before I dump the rest out, Solas?” she yelled at their tent.

A negative grunt was the only response. Nothing was going to spoil this extended after-glow, Shepard decided. He’d volunteered for this mission. With her internal pep-talk concluded, Shepard organized her team in taking down the tent and departing for the shore. She resisted the urge to give Solas a comradely pat on the rear as he knelt to pull up the tent-stakes. She was charming, after all.

* * *

Shepard had never been invited to a battle as a spectator before.

Her team had obtained a good position at a cliff over the beach and were taking turns watching the melee through the lensed eye-sockets of one of those creepy skull-viewers.

Shepard felt the urge to adopt the voice of Xerokkes, the turian announcer for the Citadel’s bioticball championship league, and score the fight.

‘It’s a great day for a beheading, and it does look like Krem has been practicing. Oooh, not quite though. That last vertebrae is always tricky, and I’m afraid we’re going to score that blow as incomplete.

Now, here’s an interesting twist, folks. These newcomers in the fancy robes had a fire spell prepared to surprise the stabby little elf. But her dwarf was ready for that move, and the robes just exploded. Boom goes the dynamite! Ha! I’m guessing the Tevinters’ coach will have a talk with them about that after the fight. Although it will be hard to talk with their diaphragms torn out.’

Shepard took her time making her way to the beach after the Chargers had put down all resistance. The Alliance regs had had very strict instructions about not executing the survivors, and if she ever did have to make a report about this abortion of a mission, she was going to be able to truthfully say she was not involved this time. Learned my lesson from Torfan, ma'am. No accounting for the tastes of the locals.

The Iron Bull reminded her, painfully, of Wrex. Although Wrex would have had the good sense to wear armor. His motley company had finished with the casual extrajudicial executions, and they were now breaking out some kind of alcohol to celebrate.

“Drink?” he asked her.

“Sure,” Shepard shrugged. It wasn’t like her implants would let her get drunk, anyway. She looked back at her team. “Anyone else?”

“It’s a little early for me,” Cassandra said. “And the entrails put me off.”

Sera already had two Chargers hoisting her over a barrel by her feet. They cheered as she closed her lips over a spigot.

Solas was picking through the purses of the corpses, reading correspondence. He was still not making eye contact with her.

So Shepard sprawled out on the damp sand next to the captain alone and accepted the questionably clean mug of room-temperature liquor.

“Nice horns,” she told the Iron Bull.

He preened a little. She hadn’t been sure, at a distance, but up close, he was recognizably human derivative. His muscles were on full display, after all, so Shepard could see that they were all attached in the same places a human’s would be. It was just a difference in proportion. He was nearly ten feet tall.

Some genetic designer had been taking some truly excellent drugs when he’d gotten carried away with the Iron Bull’s people.

He launched into the hard sell on his company. It wasn’t necessary; Shepard wasn’t in the habit of turning down assistance when it was offered. Once she’d scrupled to let Ghorek’s terrorists run security on the Crucible, she was resigned to accepting all comers. But it was nice to hear the capabilities of the Chargers. Nice to see the disparate ‘races’ of Thedas all working cooperatively. That was how it should be. Turian agent on her six, quarian working the bypass, drell assassin in the heights.

“Yeah, ok,” Shepard said, finishing her drink. She waved her hand airily at the Iron Bull. “Sounds good. You’re hired.”

He peered suspiciously at her empty mug. “Did you finish that?” he asked.

Shepard looked around for the cask they’d been drinking from. She was actually feeling a little buzz, so it must have been strong. She’d have another. She could use the calories.

“Uh, you’re still feeling ok?” he said.

“Mom was Irish,” she told him. “High tolerance.” She poured her refill.

He cleared his throat. “Love to meet the Irish, in that case,” he said.

“Unlikely,” Shepard said. “Ireland is 2.5 million light years away.” The drink was strong; she was now feeling pleasantly tipsy, like a good two-beer buzz. When two beers had been her weeknight limit and had gotten the job done.

“Yeah…” the Iron Bull said, looking at her curiously. “So, uh, word is you’re not from around here.”

“Nope,” Shepard said, emphasizing the plosive with a firm, wet pop of her lips.

“You, uh, got any friends coming to help you out with this stuff?” he said, gesturing vaguely at the rifts they could see far down the beach.

“Nope,” Shepard said again, taking another drink. “Just these jokers here. Cassandra has a very pointy sword,” she added.

“Woman after my own heart,” he replied. “Though she looks like she could snap your neck with her thighs.”

“Yeah….” Shepard said appreciatively. “They’re all pretty easy on the eyes. One perk of this mission.”

She wriggled down a bit more in the comfortable sand.

“Alright, whatever you’re waiting for, lay it on me,” she said. “You got a line of inquiry, or is it something to confess? I’m drunk enough now for whatever it is.”

The Iron Bull coughed. “You, uh, catch on pretty quick.”

“Not my first rodeo, cow-boy,” she said, companionably.

His confession was one of the least interesting she’d heard. He was working for some far-off country of horny people, and was expected to advance their cause while helping out with the Breach. He told, her, nervously, that he would be writing letters home.

“Whatever floats your boat, big guy,” she said, patting his pie-plate-sized hand with her own.

“That’s it? You don’t even care what I put in my reports?” he asked, eyebrow lifted.

“Nope. I’m fucking right out of this place as soon as I get the GAP closed and my ship fixed. You guys can go right back to proselytizing and oppressing each other as soon as I’m done.”

He coughed again. “That was easier than I thought,” he admitted.

Shepard grinned at him. “That’s what my dates always say.”

* * *

The next time Shepard woke up, she was lying in snow, not sand. The sky was flat and grey, not stormy. The wind smelled like amine. How did she know that? She’d never smelled the air on Alchera before. She’d suffocated long before she hit the ground.

She wasn’t wearing a breather helmet this time, and the snow did not chill her feet. When she looked down, she was wearing her N7 rec outfit- hooded sweatshirt and cargo pants.

“Are we going jogging today, Solas?” she asked the empty air, turning around until she found him. Solas was running a curious hand over the tires of the Mako where it had rolled to rest near the aft section of the SR-1.

He was wearing armor, this time. Ostentatious, shiny armor. She gave him a questioning look, and when he looked down at himself, the armor abruptly vanished, to be replaced by his usual baggy drab.

“Neat trick,” Shepard said. “If you can do that, why can’t we meet in places where nobody died?”

“Like I said before, Shepard, it is your mind that chooses the location, not mine,” he said patiently. “Who died here?”

“Me,” she said, crossing her arms and looking around for her helmet.

She found it on a ledge, the same place it had been the last time. She picked it up again. She wished she could bring it back with her into the waking world. Stupid nostalgia, for a piece of armor that hadn’t even done its job very well.

“Pardon?” said Solas. “Did you just say you’re undead?”

“No,” said Shepard. “I got better.”

Feeling morbid, she gestured for Solas to follow her into the ruins of the CIC. She scooted back against the galactic travel interface and indicated that he should start talking.

“I’m concerned about some of the people you have recruited to the Inquisition, Shepard. The Iron Bull in particular. The Qun is a danger to all of Thedas, and he has already admitted to being an agent of the Ben-Hassrath,” he said. His posture was stiff, uncomfortable. She knew this wasn’t what he wanted to talk about.

Shepard dramatically rolled her eyes at him.

“I’m shocked, just shocked, Solas. You’re saying that he’s got his own agenda, which might not be aligned with the restoration of the pre-Breach human Chantry regime? Solas, how will we ever incorporate him into our team,” she said, deadpan.

Solas inclined his head, taking her point. “Joke as you will, the Qun is dangerous, and you cannot rely on indomitable will alone to manipulate such disparate agendas into serving your own.”

“Indomitable will?” She was intrigued by that.

“Presumably. I have yet to see it dominated. I imagine the sight would be…fascinating.”

Now they were getting somewhere.

“I’m confident in my ability to end up on top, as a general rule,” she said, pushing off of the table and stalking across the two steps that separated them.

“You did not last night,” he breathed, looking down at her. Her mind must have accepted that he was taller than her. Bigger than her.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she said, sliding one foot between his two, and thrusting her hip forward against him. Their crossed arms were nearly touching. She was crowding his space, and he wasn’t moving back even a fraction. He looked down at her, proud, severe.

“And would you beg, if it came to that?” he asked, smoothly.

She wet her lower lip, and watched his pupils dilate as they followed the movement of her tongue.

She ran a couple of fingers down the lapel of his tunic, callouses snagging on the rough, loosely woven fabric. She tilted her head at him.

“If you want to see me on my knees, Solas, all you have to do is ask.”

That broke whatever grasp he had on his self-control. In the space of a breath, his hands both slid up the sides of her neck to grasp her head and tangle in her hair. His lips pressed against hers hard enough to bruise, and she felt his teeth more than his tongue. She wanted to taste the scar on his face, the dimple in his chin, but he held her face against his while his tongue began to explore her mouth. He tasted like ozone, like pure electricity.

She managed to free her hands from where they were trapped between them and run her palms down his sides to pull him closer to her by his hips. She and Solas were pressed against each other from head to toe, and she wanted more, closer, harder.

She felt his exhale of breath against her lips as he slid his hands down to her shoulders to separate them. The pressure he used to push her away was slight, but the grip of his hands was hard.

“We can’t,” he said. “It’s not right. Not even with you.”

She shook her head and pressed one hand delicately against his midsection, fingertips splayed.

“I don’t care about whatever it is, Solas,” she said. “It only matters that you’re here for me right now.”

He looked away from her, gazing at the shattered lettering that had spelled out the name of the Normandy SR-1. The monument was there now, depicting their souls soaring free to the sky.

“I will have to think about it,” he said. “And for now, you had best get some real sleep.”

And before she could argue with him again, she was out of Alchera and staring at the roof of the canvas tent above her. She rolled over to look at the bedroll to the left, before remembering that the bastard had borrowed an extra tent from the Chargers, and was sleeping all the way across camp.

Chapter Text

[Translated from Qunlat]

From Hissrad-called-“the Iron Bull” to Isskari-who-has-eleven-fingers-

May the peace of the Qun be upon you. As instructed, I have joined the Inquisition with the bas-irregulars under my command. At the Storm Coast, the Chargers battled 32 Tevinter forward scouts and killed them all as a demonstration of the services available to the Inquisition. The Herald of the Inquisition was favorably impressed and has agreed to incorporate myself and the Chargers into the Inquisition.

The Herald is a human woman approaching middle age. She appears to have received extensive military training, source unknown. She says she came from beyond the furthest visible stars in a ship that sailed through the sky and I’m starting to believe her even when I’m sober Her nationality is unknown. Political and religious affiliations unknown. She beat me at arm-wrestling Her combat abilities are greater than those generally known to southerners. I will suggest training adjustments to stens and ashaads in subsequent reports.

The Herald is a saarebas of unknown training. I have not observed her to be subject to demon corruption. I observed her use the glowing mark on her left hand to close several rifts, corroborating the reports of several viddathari in the Hinterlands. She used her unknown magic to pull like three demons at once off the ground and then turn them outside in and it was so impressive I got a semi-chub terminate a group of demons. The Herald has an item of high technological sophistication on her left arm, but I have not observed her to use it other than for the production of music. She played something she called “late twentieth century industrial rock” for me and I really liked it.

The headquarters of the Inquisition is a temporary camp in unfavorable terrain near a former Andrastrian religious site. It offers ready access to the Breach but few other advantages. If instructed, the Chargers will assist in scouting for more secure locations. Otherwise, structural and defensive weaknesses are identified below.

[Maps and charts follow]

Although the Herald does not evidence any awareness of the fortifications necessary to prevent ground assault, I have observed her attempting to bring the logistics up to health and sanitations standards that meet or exceed Qunari levels. She made Skinner take a bath  Her religious beliefs include invisible spirits present in soil which cause illness, and she has enforced ritual hand-washing prior to and after meals, use of sanitation facilities, or contact with injuries. She made me put on a shirt.

The Herald appears entirely uninterested in resolving the political turmoil currently causing instability among the southern kingdoms, and is focusing all resources upon the closing of the Breach and the development of technological sophistication in the Inquisition.

 The Herald has been attempting the small-scale manufacture of what she calls “smokeless powder” with an alchemist from the Kinloch Hold Circle and the elf saarebas called “Solas.” Based upon the controlled explosions I have observed, the “smokeless powder” exceeds the explosive potential of gaatlok.

Detailed reports on other members of the Inquisition to follow. I have not observed the Herald to be swayed by the opinions or suggestions of other Inquisition members, except perhaps by the elf saarebas.  These southerners are all really friendly- I had a threesome last night with two elves on the catering staff and they taught me how to make roast rack of lamb today.   I will continue to ingratiate myself with other members of the Inquisition.

I leave tomorrow to join the Herald on a diplomatic mission to the Templar stronghold Therinfal Redoubt. Additional reports to follow upon my return.

Chapter Text

From where Varric was standing, the mission had gone to shit, even if nobody was saying it. He was pretty sure the screaming, crashing, and (alarmingly meaty) crunching sounds coming from behind the door were the sounds of 20-odd Orlesian nobles meeting the Maker prematurely. Andraste’s tits, was that Templar glowing red?

Shit

Shit shit shit

Shepard had warned them to expect a trap. Varric could have warned them to expect a trap. After his little display in the Grand Market, even if the Lord Seeker had invited them in for tea and cakes instead of trying to kill them off the bat, Varric would have been sniffing the tea for poison, hiding the cake under his napkin, and keeping his back from the windows. 

But Varric wouldn’t have expected the Lord Seeker to slaughter the flower of Orlais’ nobility before Shepard was done reading Josephine’s pre-prepared introductions and greetings off her notecard. And he could tell Shepard hadn’t either.

Anyway, murder before breakfast was a relatively accepted occurrence in his life, thank you Hawke, and he and the team had rolled with Knight-Captain Denam’s assassination attempt soon after they had arrived at Therinfal Redoubt on a supposed mission to recruit the Templars.

Bianca took down the archers who had followed the Knight-Captain in, and Cassandra did something Seeker-y that had stupefied the other Templars. Bull smashed.

Something was going wrong with Shepard, though.

As soon as the Knight-Captain had pronounced his betrayal, Varric had seen Shepard turn blue to start doing her thing. But unlike every other person/creature who had been on the business end of Shepard’s game face, Denam did not fly into the air, explode in a shower of pink bits, or twist into disturbing and fatal new shapes.

Instead, Varric saw a faint shower of electric sparks fall off of Denam harmlessly and sputter on the floor. Even more alarming, when Denam gave Shepard an evil grin and slammed his sword into the ground in a textbook smite, Shepard did not shake the smite off and take his head off, as she had dealt with every other Templar they had encountered.

Instead, Shepard slid to the ground, a poleaxed expression on her face. Shepard was down.

Luckily, Ser Barris and a few junior Templars managed to take out Denam’s red and glowy set, and Bull kept the combat away from Shepard’s prone form by simple dint of swinging his giant sword in a circle over her body.

When the immediate combatants were all dispatched, Bull tried to prop Shepard into a sitting position. Her eyelids fluttered. A thin trail of blood dripped out of one nostril. Shepard licked it off. Varric had seen Hawke do the same thing. It still wasn’t attractive. 

“…my fault for charging in like a monkey fucking a football,” Shepard was saying to Bull as he tried to convince her to drink a lyrium potion. “And I’m not going to drink the eezo, you assholes are crazy.”

Bull made a half-hearted suggestion that they should retreat back to their forward camp and regroup, which Shepard took about as well as he would have expected. She glanced at Barris and Abernache, and then quietly informed her team that if they retreated now, not just the Templars but the whole of Orlais was going to know that the Inquisition would expose its belly at the sign of even marginal resistance.

“Four assassins isn’t even resistance,” she said. “It’s barely a RSVP no with regrets.” She didn’t look so hot as they searched for an exit from the forecastle, and she looked even worse by the time they were taking heavy fire in the main courtyard.

She was peeling off the odd junior Templar, but her unique glowy blue magic didn’t seem to affect the officers at all. She seemed suddenly soft and vulnerable to Varric; she didn’t wear much in the way of armor, even less than he did, now that he thought about it. And she was, after all, on the short side for a human woman. He tried to edge in front of her while keeping up a steady firing rate with Bianca, and she gave him a shit-kicking scowl when she realized what he was doing.

They ducked into a side room reeking of decomposition to catch their breath (through thick handkerchiefs, because the Knight-Vigilant who had been the room’s prior resident had been dead long enough to go gloppy). Shepard was bent over, breathing hard, with a hand covering a nasty arrow slash along her side. Cassandra started efficiently pouring elfroot poultice over the wound, but her face was troubled.

“Herald, if your…biotics are not affecting the Red Templars, surely you can employ more traditional magic?” Cassandra asked.

“Oh sure,” Shepard said, panting a bit. “If they hold very still for several moments and don’t interrupt my concentration, I might be able to set them on fire.”

Cassandra offered her a needle and waxed thread, and Shepard gritted her teeth and commenced sewing her wound shut in quick, tight jerks. Shepard pulled her tunic down over the slash when she was done, and took a few deep breaths, bracing herself. 

“It’s the red lyrium,” she said. “It’s affecting my biotics. It must have some kind of nullifying reaction on the mass effect my internal eezo nodules generate.” 

“You have lyrium inside you?” Varric asked, incredulous. Maker, that wasn’t good. Fenris had lyrium inside him, and he did nothing but bitch about it. It had also made him uniquely vulnerable to Templar attacks. And if Shepard was already a mage… 

“You drink it!” Shepard retorted.

“None of us drink it, just mages and…shit,” Varric concluded. 

Cassandra and Bull looked like they were having the same sinking feeling he was. Cassandra nudged a few bits of the Knight-Vigilant aside with her toe, and came up with a Templar longsword. She wiped it on the curtains and, with an uncertain face, presented it hilt-first to the Herald.

“Your military training must have offered some experience with hand-to-hand weapons,” she said. 

“Yeah, like fifteen years ago,” said Shepard. “Shanking people’s for infiltrators, covert operators. It’s a little hard to conceal a biotic charge followed by a shotgun blast.”

Still, she sighed and took the blade. “Alright, team, consider me heavily DINQ on this mission. Cassandra, you’re going to have to take point until we can get to the Lord Seeker.”

Cassandra looked a bit nauseous at that idea, but so did they all. With Barris’ assistance, they nonetheless made a slow climb up to the main hall of the fortress. 

The Lord Seeker was standing at the top of the stairs, alone. Varric let out his breath in relief. He didn’t holster Bianca, and Bull and Cassandra kept their blades extended. But Shepard stuck her borrowed blade back through her belt and walked towards him with her hand open and forward.

“Lord Seeker, your resistance is over,” she said, voice relieved. “You will be given a chance to surrender to the Inquisition.”

Lucius spun around, and there was nothing but green light behind his eyes, nothing human, nothing real. Not the Lord Seeker, Varric thought dimly.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, grasping Shepard by the shoulders and pulling.

And Shepard’s back arched, and her limbs jerked out, and she screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

Chapter Text

Are you your allies, Shepard?

The familiar background hum of the CO2 filters was buzzing in Shepard’s ears when she woke up. Not in her bed. She blinked, and Liara’s familiar form swam into view, bent over her rat’s nest of monitors.   Shepard murmured her name.

“Hello Shepard,” said Liara, in someone else’s voice. Shepard let that go. Any Liara was better than none. She struggled into a sitting position. Why was she so tired? Why was she moving so slowly?

“Liara,” Shepard groaned. “God, it’s good to see you. What’s going on?” Shepard pushed her feet, which weighed a thousand pounds, to the floor. She frowned. Where were her boots? She was wearing the white leather armor she’d found in a chest in Haven. She’d been in Haven.

Careful, said another voice. It wants to know, but it doesn’t know that you don’t.  

Liara finally turned to look at her, her expression grave. 

“You know what you have to do, Shepard,” she said. “Do I need to get Hackett on the vidcom to remind you?”

Shepard couldn’t remember what she was doing, but she didn’t want to admit it.

“You don’t look right.   Let me get Karen to come in here,” said Liara.

Liara walked to Shepard and put a cool hand against Shepard’s forehead. Shepard leaned into it, eyes closing. God, it felt so good to touch her. Liara’s touch always healed. Liara’s face was a perfect picture of concern, green eyes wide and troubled. No. Liara’s eyes were blue. Green was the wrong color. 

“I don’t- no, no, I don’t need to talk to Dr. Chakwas,” Shepard said. “Please excuse me.”

Shepard and someone else quickly left the XO quarters. She waved at Varric, hard at work fixing a panel, and took an elevator to the CIC. The war table was waiting for her. Leliana and Miranda flanked it, waiting expectantly.

“We’re ready for you to decide, Shepard,” they said together. “Is it the Templars or the mages? Will you rebuild or destroy? Will you let Celene live or die?”

No. It wasn’t for her to decide. She was just a soldier, just a grunt. When she made decisions, they were always bad ones. Everyone died, no matter what she chose. There were no good decisions.

It’s not your fault, said the other person. You never asked for the responsibility. They gave it to you. Strong shoulders, narrow but wide enough to carry the burden. ‘What about Shepard?’

Shepard turned away from the war table and fled back to the elevator. She hit the button for her cabin, pounding it with her fist. For once, the elevator was quick, but it did not open to her cabin. Instead, she stepped onto the Presidium.  

* * * 

There was no artificial daylight, no clouds in the sky. It was night above her, and night around her, with debris falling in spouts of green and orange flame. Bodies from many battles still smoldered.  Geth.  Cerberus.  Reapers.  

Are you what you destroy?  

“Commander!” a familiar voice called to her across the bridge. Shepard dodged through the rubble, avoiding the falling supports and mangled bodies of Keepers and residents alike. She jogged, noting that the fountains were dry, and the Avina terminals were gone. Where was the krogan monument?  She couldn't see it through the green haze.  Why wasn't she in armor?

Shepard slowed her pace when she could see the two figures through the smoke.  Kaidan and Ashley were waving to her, arms around each other’s shoulders. Their armor matched. They smiled.

“Shepard,” said Kaidan. “Did you find it? What you were looking for?”

“The LT said you’re with Cerberus now, ma’am,” said Ashley. “Did they tell you what you needed?”  

Kaidan smiled at her.  "I'm an admiral now.  Posthumous promotion.  Shepard put it in," he said, nodding at Shepard gratefully.  

Behind them, Shepard realized, was the Normandy’s memorial wall.

“You’re not real,” said Shepard, shakily. 

“Will the Templars help you stop the demon army?” said Kaidan, ignoring her statement. “You’re good at killing things, but you’ll need help.” 

“Killing you didn’t help,” Shepard said, teeth gritted. “It didn’t help one damn thing.”

You destroy what you love, Shepard.

“Good thing we weren’t friends,” said Wrex, stepping out of the green smoke that swirled around them. Ashley gave him a friendly knock on the headplate. He grinned at her affectionately, showing dozens of teeth.  

It’s lying.  You were his friend, said the other person. You missed him for years.

“You only love the things you think you’ll lose,” said Thane, coming to stand next to Kaidan. They linked arms, black leather over blue armor. “You only loved me because I was dying. You only the take missions you think will kill you. You don’t want anyone to think you failed. You fail before you begin.” 

“You knew I was a goner the moment you met me,” said Kasumi. “Squishy!” She gave a little wave. Kelly Chambers nodded in agreement. “You go in knowing you’re bound to lose, so you’ll never feel the loss.”

“It doesn’t go wrong if it could never have gone right,” added Mordin.

It doesn’t understand how big their deaths were, the other person said. You’re so much bigger than it, and the bigger you think, the harder it is for it to keep up. Show it all the deaths it took, and how big they were.   

Shepard’s face was wet. Blood or tears, she wasn’t sure.

“You missed a few,” Shepard said, wiping her face. “My parents. Nihlus. Benezia. The colonists of Zhu’s Hope.”

Faces began to emerge from the fog, coming to stand around her fallen friends.

“Admiral Kahoku. The Council. Ronald Taylor. The Horizon colonists. The geth heretics.” The world began to shimmer around her. The space around them was beginning to get crowded. Some faces were sharply defined, others hazy. Kaidan was holding his stomach as the blood seeped from between his fingers.

“300,000 batarians at Aratoht!” she continued. “The marines under my command at Torfan! Legion! Aralakh Company! Samara! Thessia! Eve! Every synthetic in the entire fucking galaxy! Anderson!” She was screaming by now, screaming so loudly that Ashley was crumpling under her assault and twisting into the fetal position, bullet wounds jerking her body. The crowd pushed around her, jostling each other and pushing at Shepard, pulling her into them. It was a riot. There wasn’t enough room. The floor buckled beneath her, and Shepard was falling.

It was too heavy for the demon, said the other voice. Too heavy for you. Nobody could carry that many people.

 * * * 

She fell through the darkness for a very long time. She didn’t mind the darkness. It was quiet, peaceful. The darkness could be beautiful. She’d died in the dark once, and she hadn’t even taken the time to notice how beautiful the stars could be. She couldn’t see any stars through the tree branches, though. Oh. She knew this forest.

Are you what you fear?

Shepard thought the forest was gone, burned, along with the child, the Citadel, and maybe Earth and the mass relays besides. But she was back, smelling damp wood and ash in the air, and listening for Harbinger’s clarion and the whispers of the dead alike.

It wasn’t the child. It was the Illusive Man, standing alone, smiling at her with green mechanical eyes. He held a glass full of red liquid. Shepard thought for a moment it was wine, or blood. But it glowed.

Envy doesn’t understand what you fear. It sees the man, and it thinks you fear the man. But you fear not fearing anymore. You fear becoming until you forget to be afraid, said the other voice.

The Illusive Man tipped his glass towards her in a toast, and took a sip. He grinned at her, and the red lyrium formed a gleaming slick over his teeth.

“Did you think you escaped, Shepard? Did you think that destroying the Reapers meant you would never become indoctrinated?”

His form flickered, and he was no longer the Illusive Man, he was Saren Arterius. He took another sip. 

“You took it with you when you went to Andromeda. Your mission never ends, because you couldn’t end it. You tried to die again and again but you just never learned how, did you?”

Don’t let it know what you’re going to do- it doesn’t understand you now, and it never will, said the other voice. 

Saren turned his head to look for the other voice, snarling, and Shepard could see the hole below his fringe, straight through to the exit wound. Shepard gagged loudly at the sight, and Saren flickered again, and finally it was Admiral Anderson standing there instead.

“You think you can close the Breach and end it. Finish the job and go home. But you’re not finished, are you? You’re no closer than when you started. Can’t you make any decisions without me telling you what to do? Are you just a thug? A hired killer? Is your only choice who tells you who to fight? Are you afraid of being responsible for your own choices?” Anderson demanded, his voice vaguely disappointed.

You know he loved you, said Cole. 

“I’m not afraid,” Shepard said, and she took the glass from Anderson’s hand, tipped it back, and drank it all.

Chapter Text

Cullen talked in his sleep. Mumbled, really. It woke Shepard up. When she opened her eyes to the rough wooden boards of the ceiling in her cabin at Haven and heard Cullen snorfling and muttering across the room in an armchair facing her bed, Shepard was angry.

She woke up angry, more than one lover had informed her. That wasn’t entirely true. Shepard had a soldier’s knack of extracting every last minute of sleep from an opportunity to catch it, and if someone else was waking her up, that meant they were cutting into her programmed allotment. If she were allowed to wake up of her own accord, she was perfectly pleasant, not to mention on time. She only woke up ready to spit bullets and warp bulkheads if someone messed with her program.

Waking up with Cullen in the room, miles and days away from her mission objective, was not part of the program.

She was ready to snap at him, but controlled herself with great effort. He looked like shit, and the small cabin was stuffy with the smell of underwashed Templar and unwashed marine. His fluffy hair was tacky and dark with sweat, and he had purple circles under his eyes. The wooden chair he was sleeping in (not to mention the birdcage he was using as a pillow) did not look comfortable.

So Shepard took pains to gentle her tone when she cleared her throat to capture his attention. “Commander.”

He woke up in a rush of flailing limbs and throat sounds. “Jane! I mean Herald.” That was points off of his tally again; nobody had ever, to her memory, called her Jane unless they were trying to sell her something.

He peered at her carefully, tension in his carriage loosening when he apparently came to some conclusion regarding her welfare. He leaned toward her, face unexpectedly open and vulnerable. “I was worried…”

“Report, Commander,” she reminded him. “I need to know the situation immediately.” She sat up in bed and tried to rustle up her dignity- someone had dressed her in her Templar undergarments, but it didn’t feel like she’d had a bath, and she still had spots of flaking, dried blood on her chest. She couldn’t feel any other injuries that would account for her apparent period of long unconsciousness.

Cullen’s report , once he’d gathered his wits, was grim and professionally delivered, once he had taken stock of himself. The Templars using red lyrium under the instructions of Lord Seeker Lucius had routed the Orlesian nobles and small diplomatic guard sent with Shepard to parlay. Shepard had encountered an envy demon, and had proceeded to engage in some sort of mental combat with it, which caused Shepard to fall into what sounded like extended gran mal seizures.

Iron Bull had eventually called a retreat, carved their way out, and carried Shepard back the forward camp with Cassandra’s assistance. Shepard was heavier than she looked. When Shepard failed to regain consciousness that evening, Cassandra feared demonic possession and had ordered the return to Haven. Shepard had been carried back to Haven covered in her own blood and piss, slung across the front of Cassandra’s horse.

Upon their arrival, Solas and some new kind of human-shaped demon he would not allow Cullen to execute had pronounced Shepard victorious against the envy demon’s attempted influence. Nonetheless, Shepard had remained unconscious for another day and a half, which brought them to the present on the morning of the fifth day since they had attempted to gain the cooperation of the Templars.

They did not have the cooperation of the Templars.

Cullen promised a fuller report from Josephine and Leliana, but reluctantly admitted that morale was low, there was a risk of desertions, and many of their tentative allies in Ferelden and Orlais’ nobility were threatening to cut ties after the disaster at Therinfal Redoubt. In short, the mission had been a complete clusterfuck which left them further from closing the Breach than when they’d started.

Shepard eyed Cullen, recalling what she knew of Templars’ functions.

“So, they left you here to watch me sleep in case I woke up craving human flesh and souls for breakfast?”

He didn’t have his sword with him, but the Red Templars hadn’t needed to touch Shepard to take her out.

“Maybe,” said Cullen. “Not because they thought I could kill you. Likely more of a convenient sacrifice to alert the others.”

“They should have given you a bell to ring or something, then,” she said.

“We’re undersupplied,” Cullen admitted.

Perhaps part of Shepard’s anger was that she hadn’t expected Cullen to be the one sitting with her when she woke up.

“Where’s Solas?” she asked Cullen, and something flitted across his face, pulling the corners of his mouth down.

“Here, I assume,” he said, a little stiffly. “Working on your…project out at the north meadows, though he’s likely still abed at this hour.”

Shepard squinted at the shuttered windows. It looked at least two hours past sunrise.

Shepard swung her legs over the mattress and started hunting out clothing. All she had were excess Templar issue, which was ironic.

Cullen averted his eyes, although she was only pulling more layers on over what she already had on.

“Should I ask the healer to come in? Or bring you something from the mess?” he asked politely.

“No time,” said Shepard. “Get the War Council ready to meet in half an hour. I’ll meet you in the Chantry. We’ll be heading back out in force as soon as we can move.”

Cullen stood up and saluted, meeting her eyes firmly. “On my honor,” he said.

* * *

Shepard was less than gentle in pounding on Solas’ door to roust the elf, but he still smiled in relief when he opened it and saw her there.

“You’re awake!” he said. “I could not find you in the Fade.” It was hard to tell when he’d woken up, as he wore pajamas and bare feet as daywear, nightwear, and combat gear.

“The demon wasn’t letting me pick the playground,” she said. She self-consciously tried to pick a few remaining specks of blood off her front. She’d washed her face and hands before stomping across the camp at least.

Solas invited her in to his cabin to explain her own experience with Therinfal while he quickly finished his breakfast of dried fruit and field biscuits. She declined his offer of the only chair, and stood awkwardly in the center of the room without his bed in it.

“What is your next move, Shepard?” he asked. “I believe you will be unable to close the Breach without the power generated by a significant number of experienced mages or Templars.”

“We’re out of diplomatic power,” Shepard answered. “And our conventional military forces, plus my biotics, are apparently insufficient to meet the Red Templars’ new abilities from the red lyrium,” she continued. “That means we need to deploy our new tech,” she concluded, nodding at him.

He hesitated to answer her implied question, and slowly continued with what must have been his morning routine, packing away his food supplies and checking his backpack.

“It hasn’t been sufficiently tested,” he finally said, staring at the floor, rather than her. “Nor, in my opinion, considered. This new technology will significantly change the balance of power in Thedas, based upon who can most quickly stockpile and deploy it. I do not believe we knew where this leads.”

“I never do,” she told him, waving his concerns off. “Get your team ready to move, Solas. The entire Inquisition is going to move out as soon as we’re ready.”

He nodded solemnly. His face was troubled. It wasn’t like Shepard was a big fan of her plan. It hadn’t been the best plan. That plan had been to go to Therinfal Redoubt and politely ask the Templars to help her fix their own world and stop demons from pouring in through a hole in the sky. Turns out the Templars were cheering on team demon, though.

Plan B was never as good as Plan A. But the envy demon’s mutterings about assassinations and demon armies tended to concern Shepard that things were about to about to fall apart hard unless she struck first. Counterstrikes were effective. Ilos after Virmire. The Alpha Relay after the derelict Collector ship. Sanctuary after Thessia. Shepard told Solas as much, and turned to leave. All she needed for him to follow orders. She didn’t need him to agree. Or help. Or sit with her while she was unconscious. She was a bit brusque in her dismissal.

He caught her left hand before she could step out the open door.

“Shepard,” he said. “I am pleased to see you are well.” He lifted her hand to his face and pressed a kiss to her palm, just below the Mark. He gently pulled her away from the door and back to him. She turned into him, and he tilted his head to kiss the corner of her jaw, and then, so briefly that she could barely feel it, her lips. She felt his warm breath on her skin more than his mouth. He released her hand and took a step back, face unreadable. Shepard moved to follow, and he retreated in tandem.

“Later,” he said, soothingly. “When we are not launching an assault on one of the major powers of Thedas.”

She gave Solas a hard stare. That look had been known to make hardened Krogan mercenaries change their minds, but not Solas. He was enjoying this power over her, she just knew it, and Shepard usually made it a point to be on top of the power dynamics in any relationship.

“Later,” she affirmed. It was a threat as much as a promise.

* * *

Within two days, the Inquisition forces stood arrayed on the heights surrounding Redcliffe at dawn. Redcliffe was built into the side of the mountains, and could be approached on foot only through the pass leading to the valley and lake. Shepard stood in front of her forces, with Cullen and Cassandra flanking her. The castle gates were shut; no envoys approached. The castle was dark and silent, with only shifting shadows on the ramparts revealing the soldiers watching the Inquisition army falling into place. The bridge across the moat had been destroyed.

When Cullen nodded at her, Shepard engaged her omni-tool and used it to magnify her voice so that it would carry beyond the castle gates.

“I am Evelyn Trevelyan, called the Herald. I have come for the Circle Mages, who are obliged by the decree of the Divine to aid her Inquisition in closing the Breach and restoring order to Thedas. I am authorized by King Alistair and Queen Anora of Ferelden to use all necessary force to evict the hostile foreign mages from this castle and their country. The terms I offer are these: surrender now, and you will be given a corridor to return to Tevinter.” Shepard read from Josephine’s notecard.

For many long moments, no reply was given, and Shepard began to wonder if the Tevinter mages intended to simply ignore the large military force arrayed at their gates. Finally, a single arrow shot over the ramparts to land in the turf in front of the castle appeared. At Shepard’s nod, Sera scampered down the embankment, waded through the moat, and retrieved the arrow. She unrolled the paper wrapped around the shaft of the arrow and handed it up to Shepard. Shepard couldn’t read it, which was embarrassing. She handed it over to Cassandra, who read it aloud.

“To the False ‘Herald’ of Nought But Her Own Destruction- Magister Gereon Alexius sends you no greetings. By the voluntary surrender of the Circle Mages and the authority granted me by the Elder One, I deny you. This fortress has never been taken. You have no siege engines, no catapults, and no sappers. You will break on the walls of Redcliffe like waves on the sand. You will be crushed against these cliffs by the forces of the Elder One, if you do not starve to death first. Your forces are as dust, and you will be less than dust.”

Cassandra cleared her throat. “There are also some Tevinter insults I’m sure you don’t need translated.”

Fair enough. Shepard had not expected the Tevinter forces to turn over tits up when she arrived.

“You leave me no choice, then,” Shepard said, voice still magnified. “Alert heavy cannon. Alert mortar gunners! Fire 200 meters ahead at my command.” She stuck her hand into the air.

She could see Solas’ gunners on the cliffs above when they lit their firepoles.

“Aye, alert heavy cannon, alert mortar gunners at 200 meters ready” came the distant shout.

“Fire at will,” Shepard called, lowering her arm, and the walls of Redcliffe Castle began to fall.

* * *

Solas had not wanted to lead an artillery team, when Shepard first brought the idea up. She’d gathered him, Clemence, and Harritt in the vacant room by the forge, and displayed the chemical formulae and diagrams she proposed to use.

The easiest part was the smokeless powder. The chemistry that Clemence was accustomed to was relatively advanced. He was familiar with all of the components necessary to mix every propellant she suggested, and after reviewing some literature on the conditions for safely mixing and storing it, she and he had settled on manufacturing napalm for incendiary payloads and guncotton for artillery. She soon had Josephine purchasing the ingredients on the market, along with a number of dummy ingredients, and delivering them to Clemence’s workshop in Haven.

The heavy guns were the next issue resolved. Any ideas Shepard had had of equipping a team of marksmen with precision rifles had fallen by the wayside. Harritt could have done it, he thought, and manufactured something like a Brown Bess to the tolerances Shepard required, but not in an open field in the middle of a wilderness. It was the detail work that that he could not perform- the fiddly little jaw screws and brass fittings, which needed long hours of squint-work for each part. If he had time, and assistance, and a better forge- but they had none of that. Even then, Shepard calculated the effective range of the rifles he thought he could make at no more than 175 meters, which was no better than most of the archers they had recruited could do. If she’d used her omni-tool to manufacture the necessary parts for a modern shotgun, she’d be sitting in the sun with the iron feed-stocks for three days straight and still have no ammunition when she was finally done. As much as Shepard missed her Eviscerator, she knew she was going to need to be flexible.

So they settled on a few heavy cannon pieces capable of taking down the walls of the castles known to Solas and Harritt, plus some mobile rocket launchers to fire incendiary shells. Harritt set up an ironworks in the fields north of Haven. Creating the cannons was a cumbersome process- near the entire forest meadow was burned to make enough charcoal to heat the smelters and forges, and the non-operative members of the fire team had to scour much of southwest Ferelden in search of sufficient ore.

It pained Shepard to see the ecological degradation in service to the manufacture of new weapons of war. But after a few tries, Harritt created four 10-foot cast iron cannons, and nearly two dozen mobile rocket launchers designed to fire over walls and into crowds of defenders who might otherwise be pouring oil, or shooting arrows, or sending large rocks back at an attacking forces.

The final problem was the lack of gunners to work the cannons and rockets. Even Shepard was infantry, not artillery, which meant there wasn’t a single qualified battery leader on Thedas, as far as Shepard knew.

“No,” said Solas, the first time Shepard asked him. “There’s no reason you should choose me. I’m an elven apostate, not a smith or an alchemist.”

“I don’t need a smith or an alchemist,” Shepard pointed out. “We have those. What we need is someone to lead the battery and train the gunners.”

“I don’t see why you would ask me to do this,” Solas argued.

“I’m not sure what the day-to-day of an apostate involves,” said Shepard, arms crossed. “But I’ve seen you give orders, make decisions, and think through problems. That’s why I’m asking you to be in charge. Can you think of someone better? Should I ask Bull to do this instead?”

“No,” Solas said quickly. “The Qun must never get this technology. Their explosives are already far superior than those available in the South, and it would be too dangerous to give them an extra edge.”

“So you pick your team,” Shepard shrugged. “If you want to recruit all elves, make your team all elves.”

Solas’ battery was all elves.

Most of the newly minted Inquisition gun team heavy (cannon) and gun team mobile (rockets) were former bakers in the Inquisition mess hall.

“Why bakers?” Shepard asked curiously, although she didn’t disapprove.

“Bakers must be precise, punctual, and clean. If they made a mistake before, the bread turned out inedible. If they make a mistake now, they’ll be blown up. I wanted to recruit people with habits of excellence.”

That made sense, as odd as it was to see the mostly middle-aged elves with their spindly little arms lifting cannon balls and packing artillery shells.

Solas had, in fact, recruited a single human to his team. Ser Marcheline of Val Royeaux was the retired chevalier Shepard had hired at Vivienne’s soiree weeks before. She’d been bumbling around Haven, looking for things to do, and getting in Cullen’s way. Solas had noticed her watching the archers and scribbling calculations in her little grid-lined notebook, and recruited her to the battery to calculate the firing solutions on the heavy cannons. She’d already created some kind of ersatz slide-rule, and after a few downloads of an advanced trigonometry workbook from Shepard’s omni-tool, was giving firing angle orders in realtime to the gunners by calculating the results in her head.

Solas was different running the battery. He looked both younger and taller as he prowled behind the firing line calmly stating his orders, and competently issued both praise and reprimand where it needed. He didn’t hunch his shoulders to appear smaller. He didn’t cast his eyes down modestly. He walked bolder, spoke louder.

He was a former officer, it was clear. Shepard wondered what his war had been. A bad one, if he never wanted to talk about it. She knew about that. She’d simply have to learn more about Thedas’ history and politics if she wanted to figure it out without asking him.

It took a single volley of the heavy cannon to take down the front gates of Redcliffe. There were no soldiers massed behind it; Alexius hadn’t seen a battering ram or siege engine, and had not prepared for a hand-to-hand melee so quickly. Cullen ordered the heavy infantry to advance to fill the hole quickly behind their shields, and the Chargers used their cover to start stringing ropes across the moat and constructing a rope and board bridge.

They’d needed most of the horses Dennet sent in the first wave from the Hinterlands merely to drag the cannons along with them. Dennet had nearly burst a vein when Shepard had informed him she was going to use the horses for draft, rather than cavalry, but when she had explained that his babies would not be charging lines or facing pikemen, he had reluctantly acquiesced. So there was no cavalry charge to go across the bridge, but Alexius had still not mustered his conventional forces in the castle, if he had them.

The second volley was artillery shells. They were packed with incendiaries, and aimed at the towers of the castle. Several harmlessly cracked against the walls, dripping fire, but at least two landed true over the turrets, igniting the wooden roofs of the towers. It wouldn’t take long for the fire to bring the entire tower down- the mortar holding the stones together had a lower melting point than the napalm. Shepard could hear faint screams, and the air took on a hint of oily smoke.

Magic streaked through the air towards them out of the main castle. A green crack appeared directly over the bulk of their forces, and there were a rough few minutes where Shepard had to scatter the lines so that she could use her biotics (still very effective against demons) to group and eliminate the demons before closing the rift. Cullen had done a good job with these infantrymen, though, and the lines reformed around Shepard quickly once the rift was closed. The defenders had started shooting arrows and using their light catapaults, but almost all of the Inquisition forces were simply out of range, although the castle was in range of Solas’ battery.

Shepard faintly heard Solas order a second heavy cannon round. This one sent a cannonball over the front gates and directly into the wall of the keep, busting a large hole in it. One more volley might bring that wall down entirely. A cheer went up from the Inquisition forces.

Cassandra’s eyes were shining as she turned to look at Shepard.

“It is miraculous, Herald! We’ve hardly lost a man, yet!” she said.

“Don’t count your chickens until they surrender,” Shepard warned her. “If we have to go into the keep, it will be a dogfight.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “but I would have said this fortress was unassailable. Thick walls. Unlimited water. A months-long siege, at best.”

It had been roughly half an hour since hostilities commenced. Shepard lifted her hand up sharply when she saw the door to keep crack open in the distance, across the moat and main courtyard. A white shirt stuck on a staff waved through the door.

“Cease fire and hold positions!” Shepard yelled. No further arrows flew from the ramparts.

After a few minutes of silence, a figure in yellow appeared in the doorway, dragging something behind him. It slowly made its way down the stairs and across the courtyard, leaving a slimy trail of red behind it. The defending forces parted. When it reached the main gates, Shepard recognized Felix, Alexius’ son. He dropped his burden and walked the last few paces to the front of the crowd. He was still wearing that hooded yellow tunic Shepard had seen him in before, and he still had dark shadows under his eyes over sunken cheeks. He now had blood splattered thickly across his chest and clinging to his hands up past the wrist. He looked dazed, hollow. His voice was loud enough.

“The Tevinter forces and Circle mages surrender unconditionally to you, Herald,” he said. The Inquisition forces started to cheer until Shepard cut them off with a curt jerk of her hand. From somewhere far back in the crowd, Shepard heard a pained shout, and turned her head to see a man pushing through the soldiers. He shoved his way to the front, and Shepard recognized Dorian, the Tevinter renegade she’d briefly encountered in the village. Had someone let him join the Inquisition?

“Felix!” he shouted. “Are you alright?”

Felix barely moved his head to look at him. Shepard recognized that look in his eyes now. She’d worn it before. Dorian pushed past Cassandra’s cautioning arm and rushed to embrace Felix, who did not look at Dorian. Felix fell to his knees, and Dorian knelt down with him, heedless of the blood and gore that covered him.

“My father is dead, Dorian,” Felix said in a toneless voice. “Magister Gereon Alexius is dead, along with First Enchanter Fiona and a number of the mage rebellion leaders. He had them bled to fuel his magic, at the end. He was trying to get enough power to open another rift. And so I cut his throat myself.” He shut his eyes and started to cry, making sounds like a little child would, and Dorian held him in his arms and rocked him while the Inquisition army looked on.

And thus the Inquisition took Redcliffe without losing a man, and gained the assistance of the mage rebellion.

Chapter Text

Haven was in a celebratory mood when Shepard returned. She rode in with the bulk of the forces, not Leliana’s outriders, who had sped back in an advance party.  She and Solas had both wanted to keep an eye on the cannons during their transport back to Haven, as the world now knew of their potential. Word would spread, she knew. But even if she could keep the secret of the smokeless powder formula from escaping (not to mention keep her alchemists safe from Qunari assassins, as Bull quietly warned her), she knew their tactics would not work like they had in Redcliffe again. Defenders would not wait to engage her forces, but would rush to overwhelm her artillery. Forces would not fall back and trust walls known to be permeable to her cannons, but would engage within their range. That was how a war evolved.  Strike and counterstrike. Evolution and counter-evolution. Shepard wasn’t worried. She knew how this arms race ended, and she was the only one in Thedas with the diagrams for detachable heat sinks if arms technology happened to take several quantum leaps forward on her watch.  So she protected her cannons, but she didn't hover over them like Solas did.  

In any event, Josephine had whipped up a hero’s welcome for Shepard and the gunners when they arrived in Haven. Her previously-anonymous elven artillerymen were swept up in a sea of jubilant civilians of all races, and were soon carried off borne on shoulders to the feast laid out in the square in front of the Chantry. Roast ram and root vegetables, Shepard was sure, but a party was a party, and she thought it would do her army good to see elves touted as the heroes of the hour. Cassandra and Cullen made some brief remarks, and hooked Shepard under her arms before she could slink away from delivering the same.

Shepard wasn’t good at what came after a victory. Her mind was already moving ahead to the next battle, the next loss, the next enemy. She’d spent her entire life moving as quickly away from her past as her forward velocity could take her, and turning around to confront even her immediate successes felt awkward and unnatural.   So she congratulated the Inquisition forces, gave special thanks to the artillery unit, memorialized Grand Enchanter Fiona for the benefit of any mages in attendance (a traitor and a dupe, in Shepard’s estimation, but she’d learned a little discretion), and reminded everyone that they still needed to fix the Breach. As if anyone could forget the Breach while it spun not five miles away, Leliana hissed, after Shepard ended her speech on that dour note. Shepard told her she welcome to replace her in all future victory speeches, and took her leave.

It took her some time to make her way through the crowd. Many of her soldiers wanted to salute and shake her hand, or raise a glass to her honor. Shepard enjoyed that part, at least. She’d never been warmly viewed by her enlisted servicemen; her reputation from Torfan had followed her from posting to posting. She’d been respected, and certainly friendly with her junior officers and chiefs, but she’d never had a relationship with the average marine under her command. It was nice to be liked, even if the prayers directed her way were disconcerting.

The senior mages she’d brought along from Redcliffe also approached her, wanting to give her individual assurances of their loyalties. Shepard was dubious, but gracious. She didn’t know what she was going to do with them after the Breach was closed. Vivienne thought they were a bunch of traitors and heretics, and had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with them. The feeling appeared to be mutual. Their first enchanters had been killed by Alexius. The mages had no other apparent natural leader; Shepard had left Dorian in charge of the junior mages back in Redcliffe merely by process of elimination. He was the only mage there who had voluntarily joined the Inquisition, after all. He seemed like a dangerous civilian dilettante, to Shepard’s immediate estimation, but she thought she could trust him to at least try to be on her side.

Shepard would not have admitted she was looking for Solas, but she wasn’t surprised to find him at her eventual destination, the bathing tent. She’d found a couple of Dalish elves, of all people, to put it together from some vids of Terran yurts. The structure was round, with a conical roof. Canvas was stretched over a timber lattice to form the walls, and reinforced with metal fittings. Shepard ducked through the canvas door quickly to avoid letting the moist heat out. She tied the leather thongs that served as the handle through the opposite side’s rings to “lock” the flap.

Inside the tent, there were four large, square wooden tubs. The tent was a short distance up a gently sloping hill on the edge of the lake, built on a wooden platform. Fresh water was pumped up from the lake into the central boiler. Hot water came from an overhead filler pipe with a long rope which could direct it over a particular tub (or bucket, if the tubs were filled) and also could be used to pull the spring-valve open to pour in hot water. There were drain holes around the floor that let used water simply flow back to the ground below. Extra bits of clean cloth and soap were stored in buckets on pegs driven into the wooden struts, and old shirts were folded on the benches ringing the room to serve as towels.

It wasn’t a long-term solution, but it had gone up in two days’ worth of work, and it meant Shepard at least, along with a few of her associates (Vivienne, Leliana, Josephine, and Varric at a minimum), were bathing daily again. The Chargers bathed together weekly as a group, and were starting to draw spectators. 

Shepard had presumed that Solas was among the frequent bathers, simply because he consistently smelled nicer than most of the other men she encountered, but she hadn’t actually encountered him in the bathing tent yet. As she’d suspected, he’d been going at off-hours- mealtimes, or Chantry prayers- to avoid other people.

He was alone, sitting in one of the wooden tubs, with his knees drawn up against his chest, and his hands and chin resting on top. The fire was built up under the boiler, so she knew he hadn’t been waiting for long. Solas barely flicked his eyes at her in greeting, but did not otherwise stir when she entered.

Shepard had been a soldier for nearly two decades, and she had no self-consciousness left about being naked in front of others. Still, she wondered what he thought about her as she stripped off her leather armor and linen underclothes.   She knew he’d seen it before. She didn’t think her body was very noteworthy, for a soldier’s. She knew her muscles were impressive and her stomach was flat, but she had narrow hips and no tits or ass to speak of, especially compared to Cassandra or even Sera. Well. That was no secret to anyone with eyes. She folded her clothes on a bench next to Solas’ (animal jaw pendant neatly tucked inside) and grabbed a flannel and a bar of the brown, rosemary scented soap Josephine had ordered in bulk.

When she was stripped, she approached Solas’ tub. 

“Room for one more?” she asked. She knew there was- the tubs had been modeled after a post-war Japanese sento, and six to eight bathers could fit in comfortably. But she wanted him to invite her.

“Please,” he said, without looking up. He’d probably imagined she would climb in and face him, but instead she slid in behind him, with her back against the wooden wall of the tub.

When she’d approached him, she could see his face was troubled, and he hadn’t yet scrubbed the traces of black powder off of his hands, arms, and face. Now that she was squatting behind him, she could see blisters and burns up and down his fair forearms.

Shepard settled down to the bottom of the tub and pushed her legs out on either side of Solas, not quite straddling his back. He startled when he felt the touch of Shepard’s washcloth on his shoulders, but he didn’t flinch away. He remained silent, so Shepard did too. She reached around him to gently soap the black grime off of his arms, then exchanged the flannel for a clean one to more delicately pat at his blisters and burns. The cannons obviously needed a few refinements.

He needed to see a healer, and get some kind of salve put on, unless… 

“Do you trust me to try something?” she asked him. He laughed, dryly.

“I’d normally ask you to be more specific, but I imagine I can offer my trust as to anything you could do from that position,” he said.

“One of the Circle mages taught me a trick on the ride back,” she said.

“Oh, please let me retract my consent in that case,” he said, but his tone was still amused.

Shepard leaned forward, her chest brushing against his back. She ran her hands down his forearms, and let them rest just over Solas’ wrists. She imagined water flowing through her fingers and turning into medigel. After a few seconds of intense concentration on her part, the blisters on Solas’ hands shrank and sunk back into his fingers, becoming new pink skin.

Solas lifted his hands and examined them closely.

“Well done,” he said. “Perhaps your failure to progress more quickly in the magical arena is merely because your talents are naturally curative, rather than martial.”

 Shepard grinned at the back of his head. “That was a bit of a backhanded complement, Solas, but I’ll take it.” 

“Not at all,” he said quickly. “After many years of study, any healing ability whatsoever still eludes me. You have a rare gift.”

 “Yes, well, I’ll start to manage all Inquisition war wounds ranging from paper cuts to stubbed toes, and you can keep track of the plan to close the Breach, ok?” 

Solas laughed again, and stretched out his legs a bit, letting some of his weight fall back against her. 

Shepard gave a few more desultory swipes over Solas’ arms and chest with her washcloth and then gave up the charade and simply used her hands. As she’d thought, he had lovely muscles all through his chest and shoulders, not to mention a beautiful sprinkling of golden freckles. Those hours swinging a giant pikestaff around had apparently paid off.

As she’d also thought, though, he was a giant ball of stress and muscle knots. She started addressing those- running her palms in circles over the large muscles, then digging her thumbs into the smaller knots. She was good at this, she knew. As a new recruit assigned to peacekeeping patrols in the ossilbir fields in Sathur, her unit had had little else to do in their downtime other than fornicate and build massage chains. She’d been a lot more meticulous in her observance of military regs in her younger days, so she’d skipped the fornication and focused on teaching the finer points of Vietnamese massage to her comrades. Solas was relaxing, bit by bit, and he groaned when Shepard put her elbow into a particular pressure point and leaned into it. The tension in his shoulders dissolved in shudders. So now Shepard touched him just to feel him. 

She ran her hands over his neck, over his shaven scalp. She ran her fingers like rain down the side of his face, feeling the beautifully hewn bones. She let them fall onto his chest, and enjoyed the firm muscles there. She slowly trailed her hands down his sides, tracing the fine scars of old wounds bisecting silken skin. When her hands finally drifted lower, she found him tight and hard against his stomach. She liked the feel of him in her hands there, too.

Solas sighed when she wrapped her right hand around the base of his cock. She released it immediately to trail one finger along the underside all the way to the tip. She let the pads of three of her fingers drag along his length then gripped him again. She began to slowly stroke him, hand curving around him as her arm moved up and down. His body was still relaxed against hers, but she could hear his breathing pick up.

She didn’t quicken her movements, but she pressed more closely against his back and wrapped her second arm around him. She cupped him from below as her other hand stroked him. If he was nervous about her Mark pressed intimately against him, he didn’t show it. After she worked him for a few minutes, she felt his shoulders flush, and she knew he was close. He’d had his hands resting on his knees the entire time, but he reached out for the wooden wall of the tub and pulled forward onto his knees, then turned back to face her.

He was beautiful. She couldn’t think of another word for it, couldn’t think of many words at all. His face was tight with feeling, and the muscles from his neck down his chest were clenched in strain. His fingers went white as he gripped the wall to their side while his other hand wrapped around his cock. His eyes met hers and they were fierce, proud. His lip curled, and she could see he had the tip of his pink tongue caught between his teeth. He roughly jerked his hand once, twice, and then spent hotly against her chest. His breath hissed out from between his clenched teeth, and he slumped forward to rest his forehead against hers, eyes closed. Shepard was afraid to move, barely to breathe for fear spoiling the moment. He slowly dipped his chin towards her and brushed soft, loose lips against her own. 

He sat back on his heels and studied her, including the mess he’d made across her tits, with evident pleasure. Shepard leaned back and spread her arms along the back of the tub. She crossed one leg over the other and winked at him. 

He gave one of his snort-laughs at that, which cracked Shepard up.

“You are a marvel, Jane Shepard,” he said, eyes sparkling. “I could almost begin profess faith in the Maker, to believe he sent you,” he said, hands resting on his hips. He reached over the edge of the tub for another towel. Shepard relaxed and enjoyed the view. He wasn’t entirely smooth upon close inspection- he had a thin stripe of golden-brown fur leading down his stomach, and she considered tackling him so that she could lick it smooth. 

Instead, Solas leaned over her and wiped her clean with the towel, then tossed it aside. He leaned forward to capture her mouth again. He thrust his tongue aggressively past her lips, and hummed in appreciation when she sucked it into her mouth. His knees were straddling hers, and he crowded her against the wall with his arms.

She ran a hand back down his stomach, but he caught it immediately and returned it to the wall beside her.

“Stay,” he said to her, pleasantly.

He set both hands around her waist and lifted her to the corner of the washtub. Then he set his hands on her knees to push them apart. He was smiling at her when he moved between her legs to kiss her again on her mouth.

“It has been some time since…well. I will be working from muscle memory,” he murmured against her lips. He left her mouth with a last, teasing kiss at the corner, then chased his lips down her jawline to her neck. He paused to suck one nipple hard into his mouth while he tweaked the other with his fingers.

Shepard had always found consistent, positive feedback to be an important leadership technique, so she moaned loudly in appreciation. She felt the corners of his mouth curve up around the tip of her breast.

He sank further down on his knees as his lips continued their downward descent across her stomach. He nipped her playfully below her navel and met her eyes one last time, pupils wide and expression darkening. He held her gaze as he leaned forward and gave a low, deliberate lick across her core.

Common, or whatever it was they spoke here, seemed like a good enough language. Got the point across just fine. But Shepard didn’t think it could beat English, with its harsh, Germanic consonants, for cursing.

“Oh fuck,” she said. “Fuck, that’s good.” 

Solas didn’t need to ask for a translation, and she probably would have hurt him if he’d stopped to ask just then.

He started off with both hands pressed against her inner thighs to spread her. She white-knuckled her grip on the sides of the tub. He mixed delicate kisses of his lips against hers with deeper, harder thrusts of his tongue. Shepard kept up her stream of obscenity leavened with blasphemy. Noise was, apparently, acceptable this time.

As her breath started to come in pants and her legs started to quiver, he pressed a finger inside her, thumb rubbing a circle along her clit before he put his mouth back on her and sucked.

Shepard stuttered out something along the lines of ohfuckmeSolasholyfuck when she came, and she might have toppled backwards if Solas hadn’t lunged up to put an arm around her waist again. She could feel little aftershocks in her limbs as well as her core, and she was all over wobbly. He carefully pulled her back down into the water, then stood to grab the rope and open the valve to admit more hot water into the tub, which had gone tepid. Not that Shepard could tell- she was blushing all the way down her chest, and her skin felt hot and tight.

Some moments later, after her heart rate had ticked back down, he pulled her against his lap to recline her back against his chest. Her toes had gone all wrinkled, but she had no fucks to give about little things like that. Solas had his chin propped on one of her shoulders, and his arm tightly pulled around her waist, and it felt dangerously like cuddling.

“It seems I haven’t forgotten how to do that, then,” he whispered against her neck, pressing a last caress with his lips into the side of her neck.

“You don’t need to fish for complements, Solas,” she said, grinning. “I’ll tell the whole damn Inquisition if you like.” 

“That won’t be necessary, Shepard,” he replied. “I think they probably heard you on the other side of camp. Possibly South Reach.”

He was adorably smug about this.

“We can say it’s part of your official duties,” she said, stuck on the riff. “Come up with a title. Cunning linguist? Too on the nose? Chief linguist? No, communications specialist.” 

“You’re terrible, Shepard. It’s a good thing nobody else has gotten to know you. There would be riots and insurrection.”

“More riots and insurrection,” she replied calmly.

They spent a few moments like that, quiet, talking of nothing important. He idly scratched her scalp with one hand; she flicked a few drops of water at his kneecaps with hers.

“What will you do next?” he finally asked. “When the Breach is closed.”

She sighed heavily.

“Start bodily dragging a few technicians several hundred years forward in mechanical advancement, I guess. It probably sounds harder than it is. I mean, if someone in my time could have mass effect theory mastered by the end of an undergraduate degree, it shouldn’t be too hard to teach the right people the skills they’ll need to fix my ship,” she said.

“Are you that eager to leave?” he inquired, and she could tell he was trying hard to sound casual. 

Shepard squirmed a bit. “Well, I can’t complain so much about the accommodations here, especially since Leliana let me out of the dungeon, but it’s about more than just getting off planet.” She readjusted her position between Solas’ thighs, and sank down more comfortably with her head pillowed on his chest, chin barely above the surface of the water.

“It’s more that I need to get my ship fixed to reestablish comms with the rest of the galaxy and find out why I’m here,” she said quietly. “I know everyone here wants to know what happened to cause the Breach, and I do too, but we know now that I crashed here days before that happened. I must have been sent here on some objective, and it’s killing me not to know what that was. Was I supposed to help this Andromeda Initiative? Did I get lost somehow? Or was I sent here, specifically….” Shepard trailed off thinking.

“Something must have happened to this colony, to make it devolve this far, but was I sent here to fix it? Or to deal with whatever made it fall?” she mused thoughtfully, deep in thought. Solas was quiet too, and she could almost hear the gears turning in his head.

“If I had to guess,” she said, “I would say it’s the red lyrium. It’s too close to Reaper tech, which was the last problem I was supposed to solve. Did solve, hopefully.”

“Is that something your friend would task you with?” Solas finally asked. “Your…Liara?”

“If she had to,” Shepard said. “She was as good as me at making terrible, horrible, necessary decisions.” Shepard sighed uncomfortably. “I hope that’s what it was, anyway. I can’t really think of another good reason for putting me on ice for a few millennia. Break glass in case of indoctrination- see Shepard for details.”

“Sounds like an awful fate,” said Solas. “To sleep for ages only to wake up and solve old problems for a new people.”

“Weirder things have happened to me before,” Shepard said. “Did I ever tell you how I learned to speak Prothean?”

She told him that one, plus a few more, by the time they finally ran out of hot water.  

Chapter Text

The Southerners were as barbarous as he’d always heard. He’d been on his feet all day long, working his fingers to nubbins, and nobody had offered him so much as an evening cordial. Dorian had reluctantly resigned himself to fetching his own drink, now that he had firmly informed the latest petitioner that his office hours were over. Barbarous. His father wouldn’t have treated a visiting shoemaker with such incivility.

Oh, it was like herding cats. Worse. Cats were, after all, fairly self-sufficient animals, well suited to fetching their own mice and such without the intervention or guidance of, say, a handsome young foreign lord. Not these mages. No, they were less cats to be herded than something smaller, smellier, and more helpless. Hamsters, perhaps. No, as much as the Fereldans liked to think of themselves as great genius wardogs, like their favored companions, Dorian was ready to rank the dogs much higher in his estimation than the Fereldan mages.

(He’d always liked dogs. His father’s dapifer had owned a noble, leggy beast who had taken bits of biscuit out of Dorian’s hand with great delicacy while Dorian studied at the dinner table as a boy.).

Herald Trevelyan had started packing her people up while Alexius’ blood was still warm on the ground and the castle was still literally on fire. She’d made a few inquiries and determined that nobody was volunteering to be in charge after the last set had all ended up with their throats slit, so she’d warmly clapped him on the shoulder, and said something to the effect of “Dorian, would you mind terribly cleaning the Tevinter out of the carpet and bringing the rest of the mages on up to Haven once they’re packed?” And that had sounded very much like something he could do, after all, resolve some mess made by his countrymen and move some of his fellow mages a day’s journey away. And he’d been distracted to boot, what with Felix still grimy with patricide and the burning fires and all. So he’d said something affirmative, he’d take care of it, and Trevelyan had said “good man” and scarpered right off back to her seat of earthy glory or somesuch. 

As soon as the arse of her horse was over the hilltop, though, all the mages not important enough to have been escorted personally to the Breach or present at the Conclave in the first place had descended on Dorian in a hysterical fury. Hysterical fury was not precisely an unknown reaction to Dorian’s leadership attempts, but he was dimly disappointed in how poorly he was taking to it all. A lifetime of careful grooming to command, of mages no less, and after less than a week of it, Dorian was prepared to lead the dogs in revolt and run naked into the wilderness to escape it.

So now, after a long day of informing, commanding, and eventually pleading with the mages that they were going to have to leave their arcane equipment and take rather more in the way of winter clothing and food with them, he was done. Absolutely done. And therefore slipping down into the wine cellar to meditate on the burdens of command. Alone.

He’d thought that Felix had given him the keys to all of the valuables and edibles in the castle, so he was dismayed to find torches burning when he climbed down the ladder to the large, cool cavern full of wineracks, cheese wheels, and spice chests.

The prior inhabitant was a handsome, beefy fellow, who’d apparently made himself at home at the sole table with a jeweled dagger stuck in the side of a wheel of brie and an open bottle of Mackay’s Epic Single Malt.

“Oh, do carry on,” Dorian said vaguely, wondering if he should be evicting the man and deciding he had done far too many things that he should that day already. “I simply came down here to….” Dorian trailed off vaguely, uncertain of who the man was. 

“Hide?” said the strawberry-blonde fellow. “If so, I recommend the mews. They haven’t kept falcons there since the Blessed Age, so it always took people quite some time to find me there.”

“I wasn’t intending to hide, just drink in peace and quiet,” Dorian replied. 

“Oh, I understand the feeling perfectly,” said the man. “I’ve already got this bottle open, so I’m happy to share. Cheese?”

Dorian had received less charming invitations from less handsome men, so he accepted and drew up a chair.

They ended up passing the bottle back and forth until it was nearly empty and eating a good half of the wheel of cheese. After a few passes of the deceptively smooth whiskey, Dorian found himself opening up to the fellow, who was a surprisingly good listener when Dorian launched into the chain of events that had led to him skating through this hot garbage fire of a Southern frolic.

“And even though she hadn’t spared two minutes for me when I risked my very valuable life, not to mention precious time, to come warn her about Alexius in the first place, the moment I become convenient to her she’s all ‘oh Dorian, be a dear, clean this mess up for me and fuck off back home, would you?'”

‘Women,” said his companion, beginning to show a bit of the effects of their drinking and cheese-ing. “So bossy. I know all about bossy ladies. One minute you think you’re in charge, saving the world, and the next thing you know you’re balls-deep in some wily witch of the wilds wondering where you went wrong. And alliterating.”   He eyed the diminishing level in the bottle, and Dorian knew he had one last problem to solve that day. They needed a second bottle. Dorian heroically retrieved another and used the cheese-knife to start cutting away the wax seal. 

“Take me, for example,” said the man. “I could be snug at home in my own castle, drinking my own alcohol, eating my own cheese, and not sleeping with my own wife, in my very own bed.”

Dorian patted the man’s hand sympathetically. “I know. That’s what I would be doing, if I were still in Minrathrous. Lovely city. Full of almond blossoms, this time of year.”  

“Oh? You have a wife back in Tevinter?” the man inquired, slurring politely.

“Happily no,” said Dorian. “But if I did, I would be not-sleeping with her too.”

“Lucky you. Wives are over-rated, as a social device. They come with all sorts of problems. Like feelings. Countries. In-laws. My father-in-law was a real asshole.”

“Mmmm,” Dorian nodded, with sympathy. “You know, I didn’t ever get your name.”

“Alistair,” said the man, reaching over to clasp his hand warmly, though he got most of Dorian’s fingers awkwardly jammed up with his. 

“Ah,” said Dorian. The name wiggled through the muck of Dorian’s mostly-drunk mind. “Isn’t that the name of the Fereldan Grey Warden? The one their hero made king after the Fifth Blight?”

The man sighed, and a long-suffering expression crested over his little goatee.

“I’m not really a Grey Warden anymore,” Alistair said glumly. “I made some bad choices, a while back. I’m terrible at being king. I should have just taken Lyna up on her indecent proposal and gone back with her to Weisshaupt to be one more slice of bread in her man-sandwich. I mean, who says, ‘no no, that’s too many elves for me, I’d rather stay here and get my own dog.’ Anora doesn’t even let me bring him inside, did you know that?” 

Dorian was nodding along, not really able to follow that, but obviously the man had his own burdens, and the references to man-sandwiches were somewhat promising. “So, were you hiding down here?” he asked.

“Not really,” said Alistair. “Anora made me come make the mages leave. Said it wasn’t appropriate for them to encourage my dear, back-stabbing uncle to come to Denerim and start fomenting movements to replace her. But your bossy lady had already done that, so now I’m just drinking and hiding.”

“I see that,” said Dorian. “Would you like to help me herd the hamsters to Haven?” Andraste help him, the man was rubbing off on him, and not in the way he liked. He was going to have to get better at this. Tomorrow. He would get better at everything starting tomorrow.

Alistair shrugged. “It’s not like I have anything better to do,” he said.

Chapter Text

To Warden-Commander Mahariel, Teryna of Amaranthine, Commander of the Grey-

Greetings. I know this correspondence is some years delayed. I blame my busy schedule as king, crippling depression, lingering sense of self-doubt, unresolved mother/father/uncle issues, heavier drinking, etc. etc. etc.

Anyway. 

In light of the great gaping hole in the sky, I thought I should let you (and by you, I mean the rest of the Wardens no doubt having a grand old time relaxing and making taint jokes up at Weisshaupt) know that there’s nothing to fear- I’m on it. And by me, I mean that Andraste has anointed a Herald, and the Herald anointed a Tevinter magister to take care of a minor task while she mends the world, and that Tevinter magister has anointed me to take care of the late watches while he gets his beauty rest. And in my case, it was less of an anointing than a hurling of an empty bottle at my head when he got tired of my jokes. You remember when Morrigan used to do that, don’t you? Ah, memories.

Anyway.

You may have heard of the failure of the Conclave- because it exploded like the Kirkwall Chantry. The Herald then swooped in and picked up the mages to help her close the Breach. And by swooped I mean she blew up half of Redcliffe castle. She left the mages she didn’t want behind and swooped on back to Haven. So this Tevinter fellow, Dorian decided to take all the non-combatants, children, and elderly back to Kinloch Hold rather than Haven, which is apparently busting at the seams with joiner-types. I imagine they’ll like Kinloch Hold better without the Templars, and I’ll like it better without the abominations.   I’m helping. I recall thinking back when you gave me this crown that I’d do rather more of that.  

We saw so many intractable problems during the Blight (beyond all the darkspawn eating the populace, of course) and I had this silly thought that once I was king, I’d do something about it. Fix the treatment of mages. Stop the persecution of the elves. Establish better relations with Orzammar. Yet somehow it’s been more than twelve years and I feel like we’re no closer than where we started.

Maker, this got grim fast.

Anyway.

I’ll be near Kinloch Hold tomorrow, then returning to rendezvous with the Inquisition forces and find out about the status of the Breach.

Most sincere regards,

His Majesty Alistair Theirin, King of Ferelden

 * * * 

To Warden-Commander Mahariel,

We saw the Breach close yesterday morning. Our mages seemed somewhat relieved to be back at a Circle tower, especially since I turned the keys over to the most senior enchanter among them and told her I wouldn’t be fussed about finding any Templars to come glare at them. There were a large number of Tranquil still keeping the place up for lack of anything better to do, so we all got to sleep in beds, eat cooked food, and do other frivolous things like that. The atmosphere was pretty celebratory.

Then last night I had the worst nightmare I’ve had since the Blight. I didn’t see an archdemon, but I could feel the song louder and clearer than I ever had before. It didn’t entirely go away when I woke up. I know I’ve spent the last twelve years pretending I stopped being a warden when I took up the throne, but there’s no fooling the taint, is there?

It can’t really be the Calling, can it? I’ve only been a warden for thirteen years. I know those of us who join during a Blight go faster, but I should have more time…and you should have more time.

Nonetheless I can feel them deep underground, and somewhere off to the southwest, a larger force of them. It is madness. Twelve years of peace and quiet, and suddenly I feel as though I’m being drawn back into the darkness so fast I think I left my bladder control back in Denerim. 

I’m going tomorrow. I was a warden before I was a king, and if I’m the only warden between Amaranthine and the Frostbacks, its my duty to deal with this.

Very truly yours,

Warden Alistair (Maker it feels good to write that)

 * * * 

My Dearest Lyna,

I know I gave up the right to call you that a long time ago, but it hardly seems likely that I’ll survive tomorrow, so you won’t have the opportunity to yell at me. Not that you’ve ever yelled. Skewered me with a disappointed frown that made me want to shrivel into the earth below me, perhaps, but never yelled.

Dorian and I found the “darkspawn” force I sensed. It’s not darkspawn, plural- it’s a bunch of glowy red Templars under the control of one giant sentient darkspawn marching west toward Haven. It seems like a bad thing that they feel like darkspawn, not to mention the whole glowing red business. Shades of that talking darkspawn you found in Amaranthine all those years ago, don’t you think?

If this letter chances to reach you, you need to send as many wardens from Weisshaupt as you can. The Calling grows worse the closer I get to the Templar force, but clearly this is a disaster made for the wardens.

Dorian and I are going to try to make it to Haven before the force does, but I don’t know what we expect the Herald to do against a Templar army headed by a darkspawn mage. It could be worse than Ostagar. Dorian’s a good fellow, and it seems a shame he’s less likely to survive tomorrow than I am. He’s friends with Lady Maevaris- do you recall my correspondence about her, several years back? It may be that Tevinter isn’t as bad as we’ve always thought.

If I do survive tomorrow, I’m foregoing this letter and bringing this news to you myself. It’s time I returned to you, and returned to the wardens. But Alistair, I can imagine you arguing. What about your duty? Well, my dear, this is my duty. I failed at being a Templar, and I’ve failed at being king. Being a warden is the only thing I’ve ever been good at. We stopped a Blight, remember that?

Ferelden won’t miss me. The only reason anyone wanted me on the throne in the first place was the promise of little baby Theirins to continue the Calenhad bloodline. Well, Anora’s made clear there won’t be any little princelings on my account, and Lady Erlina’s even less likely to get her with child than I was, so I can’t even expect any bastards to pass off on the Bannorn. If I head back to the wardens, she can marry herself off to Grand Duke Gaspard or Sebastian Vael or a whole pack of mabari, for all I care. I’m quit of the charade.   

But Alistair, I can imagine you arguing again, you make bloody bad choices, how can you decide to go off and abdicate without talking to your uncle, or Anora, or maybe your Warden-Commander? Well, it’s very true that I’m not to be trusted with my own life, which is why if I survive, I’m coming to Weisshaupt to turn my future over to your small, capable hands.

If I don’t survive, then I suppose you’ll have this letter, and my apologies. I apologize for making a royal mess of my life, and that I never got a chance to tell you in person. I planned to come and love you as much as you and Zev would let me, but I imagine that’s very little comfort, very late.

It seems odd to be nostalgic for a Blight, but you should know I think that year was the happiest time of my life. I think the best things in my life I ever did, I did with you.

The Templar force is on the move in the night. I can see the torches. I must follow.

With all my love,

Alistair

* * *   

There was a certain familiar rhythm to it. Charge. Stab. Breathe breathe breathe. Charge. Stab. Breathe breathe breathe. The Red Templars might not be affected by her biotics, but she was still affected by her biotics. So she had acquired a modified heavy gauntlet for her left hand which was reinforced enough to let her drive her arm into her opponent’s gut, hopefully knocking them back enough that she could finish them with the dagger she held in her right hand.   It was a lot messier and more risky than charging with a shotgun, but it was the best solution she’d come up with for dealing with the Red Templars.

Vivienne had pronounced her progress in using Thedosian magic admirable, but Shepard understood that it normally required a decade or more of consistent study before a mage was considered well-trained enough to use magic without a minder. Shepard didn’t intend to still be on this planet in a decade. 

Moreover, both Vivienne and Solas relied on a bladed staff as a melee weapon, and Shepard had only managed to knock herself on the forehead and then bruise her right knee the one and only time she’d picked up a staff to experiment with it. No, until she could manufacture a firearm, Shepard was going to rely on a foolproof little piece of sharp steel to deal with any enemy unaffected by mass effect fields.

Her omni-tool had been their first warning of the advancing army of Red Templars. Shepard had managed to program it to scan for eezo sources, thinking that if they happened to pass a large deposit while riding around the country, she could flag it for future extraction and refining. The kind of lyrium used by mages and Templars in Haven was too dilute to register, but a Red Templar apparently set off her scanning field like an alarm bell.

The sight of the Red Templars coming over the rise set off a twinge of animal panic in her chest, but Cullen, of all people, had taken over the evacuation of Haven with more competency than she might have expected from him, giving her a few moments to take herself in hand. Solas went to use the cannons to bring down the glacier over the bulk of the force without needing instruction, and Vivienne had serenely gathered the senior enchanters together and evacuated the mage forces brought in from Redcliffe. Shepard placed Iron Bull and the Chargers on protection of the non-combatants as they withdrew through the Chantry up the mountain. Shepard and the remainder of her allies tried to establish a defensive perimeter around the Chantry.

Cullen was right- their position wasn’t defensible, not if they’d had a year to harden it. Shepard wished she’d paid a little more attention to Vivienne’s descriptions of the Templars’ grievances- what would make them throw so many lives away in an all-out attack on a force that was neutral to them, at worst? 

Charge. Stab. Breathe breathe breathe. The red lyrium and what it had started to do to the men and women she took down made her skin crawl. Every time she got close to a former-human taken over by the crystalline growths she thought she could hear the voice of the Illusive Man whispering to her.

The dragon squashed any hopes she might have harbored of victory. The noise of great wings beating down on her reminded her of being pinned down in the Tuchanka rubble while Harvesters dove overhead. No heavy weapons this time. No sniper. No armor. No shields. She had a pointy piece of metal and a head full of nightmares.

It blew a gust of fire at one of the disused catapults and flew out for another turn.

Varric was crouched behind a wall of sandbags with her. She’d taught him to embrace the idea of “cover,” since he was still declining any kind of armor that might actually protect his vital organs while he shot with his crossbow.

“Varric,” she whispered. “Get out of here.” He’d just popped out to lay down an impressive curtain of bolts over a duo of Templar archers, and he nearly brained her with the bayonet on his crossbow when he spun around to stare at her.

“What?” he said, shocked.

“I’m going to sprint for the west gate,” Shepard said. “We’ve got a stash of angel-fuckers there that might bring that big thing down if I can catch it in the wing.   At a minimum, it will draw that thing off of the Chantry while the rest of you get out.”

“Herald, no,” he said in a choked voice. “I’m coming with you.”

“Your tiny legs can’t keep up with me,” Shepard snapped at him. “I want you getting out. I’m expendable now that the Breach is closed. The rest of you need to put this shithole back together.”

“Herald!” he protested.

“Now, Varric,” Shepard said firmly. She knew how this went. “That’s an order.”

How many lives did a cat get? Shepard tried to remember as she dodged arrows and bolts of energy alike. Was it nine? That couldn’t be right. Seven and twelve were the heroic numbers. Three was a heroic number too. Perhaps her third death would be the last one.

Solas had already evacuated the artillery staging area, Shepard discovered. She saw only one body there, a middle-aged woman with a scar on her cheek whose name she hadn’t learned. The cannons had been grouped together and laced with clay jars of black powder. Another more elderly elf sat cross-legged next to the body, holding the hand of the dead woman with her left and a lit lantern in her right.

“What are you doing?” Shepard demanded, skidding to a halt. “There’s a general evacuation order. You need to get to the Chantry right now!”

“I have different orders,” said the woman calmly. “I’m to blow up the cannons if we’re overrun.”

Shepard swallowed grimly. It was a good idea. They couldn’t let those guns fall into the hands of the enemy.   But to come face to face with this woman, who was awaiting her immediate death with more composure than Shepard was….Shepard had given orders for soldiers under her command to charge and likely die many times. Torfan. The suicide mission. Virmire. Tuchanka. But there had always been a slender hope that any given individual might survive. Not so here. This woman’s orders were to die.  

Solas was made of harder material than she’d thought, Shepard realized.

“I’m Jane,” she said. The area was calm for a moment. The woman tilted her head at her with minimal curiosity. Her clothes were faded and patched, but her grey hair was arranged in perfect braids around the back of her head. Her carriage was straight, proud.

“I know who you are,” the woman said. “My lord told me about you.”

Solas, she must mean, thought Shepard. 

“I’m called Rogelan,” she continued. “It means ‘daring one.’” 

Shepard’s face softened. “I can see that,” she said. 

Selfishly, Shepard was glad she wasn’t going to be alone. She’d died alone twice now, and it was a rubbish feeling.

“Alright Rogelan, let’s see if we can accomplish two objectives at once,” Shepard told her. “I’m going to try to lure that big dragon over here. When it gets close, you blow the powder. Can you do that?”

Shepard’s tone was coming out casually, but that was what fear did to you, she knew. It flattened you, squeezed you thin, took out what made you a person. If you didn’t want to be an animal, you had to be a machine. You had to give and follow orders and let yourself be nothing but your actions and training.

Rogelan considered Shepard’s plan for a moment, then nodded carefully.

“A lot o’ them folk at the Chantry will make it out if we can down that beast, wouldn’t they?” Rogelan said, pleased.

“That’s right,” said Shepard, sorting through piles of shells and launchers for the upright small guns she needed.

She eventually found a design based on English World-War I anti-aircraft artillery, and drug it to the center of the clearing. It didn’t take long for the dragon to spot her, especially since Shepard was jumping, waving her arms, and yelling “Oy dragon! Dragon!”

She hadn’t practiced with this weapon though, so she blew the timing. The shell went wide of the dragon to explode harmlessly down the hill.   The dragon banked sharply then went wide for another long pass. Shepard gestured for Rogelan to crouch down and hide behind the sack of black powder jars when she saw a form on the back of the dragon. The dragon landed somewhere around the bend of the path.

Shepard was reloading the gun by packing in another shell when the monster’s hovering form whipped around the turn towards her. It was at nearly point-blank range when Shepard got the gun to fire.

The monster had some kind of barrier, and it seamlessly disintegrated the shell without so much as a burp. Its human face smirked at Shepard, then it reached down to seize Shepard by the left arm.

Shepard could see Rogelan peering out from her hiding place, face finally showing a slight bit of strain.

‘Not yet,’ Shepard tried to mouth to her as she was lifted off her feet.

 The thing was huge, taller than Iron Bull, and loosely based on a human.   It didn’t look like it had been engineered, though- bits of face were sheared off, and various anatomy had been replaced with crystal and tech. It was an abomination, as bad as any Cerberus or Reaper monstrosity, not an evolution.  

“Jane Shepard,” the monster intoned. “Envy has told me of you.”

Shepard barely listened to it as it began monologing. Like all crazy monsters, it liked to talk, as though it wanted her understanding before she died. Shepard cared less and less each time.   Instead, her eyes were fixed to the sky as she tried to ignore the strain of the tendons in her arm as she dangled.

“We are not so different, you and I,” Corypheus said. 

Shepard doubted that, as she always had. Just because she made bad decisions and killed people didn’t put her in fellowship with every creature in the universe that also made bad decisions and killed people. She had even less reason to care what this one wanted than the rest. 

It could tell she was barely listening, even if it didn’t know she was just waiting for the dragon to come back into range.

“I know that you can see how wrong this world is. I sought only put it back into order, under my control. I did not expect to require your assistance,” it said.

Rogelan was still waiting patiently. Shepard saw the flaming arrow from over the tree line indicating that her people had withdrawn. But she wanted to take out that dragon too.

“I only require the use of your Mark,” said Corypheus. “But I do not expect you to help me for free. Envy told me what you want. You want to leave this place. I can help you do so.”

Corypheus brought his left hand into her line of sight. He was balancing a large, floating orb.

“Not interested in your balls,” Shepard gritted through her teeth. Her shoulder was in danger of separating from its socket. But that was fine. All she needed was to be able to signal Rogelan. 

Corypheus laughed, in a sound like bones splintering.

“Look again, little wanderer. Look with your orange magic.”

It dropped her, then pinned her to the ground by thrusting its claws through her right shoulder. Shepard screamed and panted for a few minutes, but it was bent over her, waiting patiently.   Finally, she managed to shakily lift her left arm and scan the orb.

Eezo. The orb was full of pure eezo. More than enough to power her ship.

Her thoughts whirled as Corypheus laughed and laughed. It would be enough. She could repair her ship.   She could contact the Alliance, or at least perhaps the Andromeda Initiative. She could go home.   

“Perhaps we will both get what we want, then? All I want is to repair the abomination this world has become, and all you want is to leave it. Help me enter the Fade, and I will give you this orb when I rule from on high. You know it as well as me. This world should never have been. It’s not too late to change it. We can change it, you and I.

Shepard locked eyes with Rogelan. The woman gave her a small smile. Shepard wished she’d gotten to know the members of Solas’ team. They really were turning out to be excellent artillerymen. The shadow of wings passed between her and the moon.

“Someone else will have to take it off our dead bodies, you malformed coat-hanger dodger,” Shepard snarled. “Rogelan, now.”

And the world exploded in fire and ice. 

 * * * 

It took Varric some days to get the words right. He didn’t need Leliana to tell him that these words were important. The Tale of the Champion might have sold enough copies to fund the rebuilding of entire blocks of Lowtown, but these words were going to change the world.

So when he finally had it right, it went like this:

The Herald was alone in Haven, when the magister came. She was alone, but she was not afraid, because she had brought all the fires of heaven with her when she stepped out of the Fade. She brought those fires down on the man who had tainted the heaven and torn the sky, but she was not afraid, because she had the Maker with her.  

When she fell, she knew she would rise.

When she returned to her people, she was carried by a mage and a Templar. A son of the Chant and a son of Tevinter.   Because in the Maker’s eyes, there is no Black Divine and White Divine. There is no mage or Templar. There is no great or small. All are equal in the Maker’s eyes. And when the Herald’s people cast up their voices in praise and thanks, each voice reached the Maker’s ears.

Varric thought it was a little overwrought, but it made the Seeker’s eyes go all misty, so he wrote to his publisher in Kirkwall and told her to crank out as many copies as she could. They were going to need some good press after getting wiped right off the map by the ancient darkspawn magister he’d unleashed on the world.

Chapter Text

The comb tugged gently through her hair. It grazed along her scalp, passed through from root to tip, then paused. Began again. Nobody had combed her hair for her since she was a small child, and Shepard kept her eyes shut to feign sleep so that the combing would continue.

She was lying on what felt like a pile of rocks, though, so she eventually squirmed out of discomfort and the combing stopped.

When Shepard opened her eyes, she found that the pile of rocks was in actuality mostly rocks, but also Solas’ lap. They were in a familiar Inquisition-issue tent, location unknown. Solas was combing bits of Corypheus and red lyrium out of her hair into a small iron bowl next to her. 

“Yuck,” she said. “You can keep doing that.” 

“As my Herald commands,” he said lightly.

Shepard felt surprisingly good, other than the ordinary aches and pains that might be expected from reclining on the ground or Solas’ bony limbs. She could dimly recall being run through with dirty finger-claws at some point, but when she pulled down her tunic over her shoulder, she could barely see a few puffy marks where she should have had infected wounds. Someone else had mental medigel, it seemed. 

Solas finished his combing, and pushed her up to a sitting position.

“You should cut it,” he said, tugging on one singed lock of her dirty hair. “It looks like you took half a face full of fire.”

He turned and rustled through his knapsack, emerging with a small pair of silver scissors.

Shepard gave him a skeptical look. “You cut hair? I’m not sure I’m ready to go quite as extreme in the personal grooming department as you do.”

Solas gave a small smile. “I haven’t always shaved my head. In my younger days I wore my hair longer than yours.”

Shepard squinted at him, trying to imagine it.

“I had the scissors, after all,” he persuaded.

“You could have half the Black Emporeum in your backpack, you hermit crab,” Shepard said fondly.

“And yet I am wearing clean clothes and holding scissors, and you are wearing darkspawn viscera without a worldly possession to your name,” Solas retorted, equally pleasant.

Shepard gave in. Solas gave her a serviceable bob. Maybe he’d been some kind of rural hairdresser before taking up the peripatetic apostate gig, she thought.

When he was done, Shepard sighed. She had delayed asking long enough.

“Ok, where are we, and what happened?” 

Solas carefully wrapped his scissors in flannel and stowed them back in his knapsack.

“Perhaps you might start with your confrontation with the magister,” he said.

 * * *  

Varric was down six shiny black pebbles, but that was only so that he could learn his opponent’s tells.

He eyed her over the edge of his hand of cards. She was a tough nut to crack, and he hadn’t been able to coax her into any amount of conversation over the ten or so hands of Wicked Grace they’d played thus far. 

“I raithe,” she lisped, tossing two more pebbles into the pot. She was trying to look nonchalant, but Varric could see a smile around the edges of her gap-toothed mouth. And that was the point of this whole exercise anyway.

Why the mages had decided to drag along a nine-year-old apprentice on this death march, he wasn’t sure. Andraste’s ass, humans could be dim sometimes.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Josephine trying to catch his eye. The Antivan was wringing her hands and looking distraught. That wasn’t typical.

So he tossed his cards down on the ground, face up. “I fold,” he announced. Angel of Death. The rest of the players groaned.

“Balls, Varric! I had three songs!” wailed Dalish. Iron Bull knocked her on the side of the head with one beefy knuckle.  

“Language,” he rumbled. “Not in front of the kid,” he said, jerking his head at the little apprentice, who scowled at him.

“I had three serpentth and a knight of thacrifithe,” she declared. “I win anyway.” She regally scooped up the pebbles into a pouch in her grimy, overlarge robe.  

“If you please,” Josephine murmured insistently, gesturing at Varric to follow her. 

He didn’t need to ask her to explain after they walked across the rest of the camp. He could hear the shouting coming from Shepard's tent before he got very close. Nothing was on fire or floating in the air, but he figured that couldn’t be far off, given the personalities involved. 

“…an important artifact of my people!” Solas said.

“Your people? Are you secretly hanging out with your many, many elf friends when I’m not looking, Solas? Your people are off a galaxy away, and I’m just proposing to use it to help you meet them.” Shepard argued.

“Help you to meet them, you mean!”

Around the tent, other members of the Inquisition were trying to go about their business with gritted teeth and wide eyes. Varric saw the problem.

Entering someone else’s tent was always an awkward business. Back in the day when Hawke had been shacking up with Blondie, Varric had always had difficulty navigating the social fiction that was the tent wall. Were you supposed to pretend you couldn’t hear your best friend fucking the apostate through an eighth of an inch of canvas? Were you supposed to tell her you could hear her? If you had to fess up that you could hear her, were you supposed to act like this was a good thing, or a bad thing? Those were the questions that kept him up all night. Actually, it was Hawke’s yowling like an alley cat in heat that kept him up all night, but those were the questions that he asked himself while she did.

Unless Shepard was kind of woman who liked angry sex, though (and he didn’t think she was, though he left a large question mark over Chuckles) the noises coming from their tent were rather less arousing, though markedly more concerning.

Varric sighed and settled for shaking the door flap of the tent in an effort to “knock” and announce his presence. Apparently they were too wrapped up in whatever they were fighting about to notice.

“You have no idea what it even does, or how it caused the Breach,” Solas told her, heatedly.

“And you do? You’ve seen some ancient dream of a long-dead elven god about it? It’s eezo. I’ve been working with eezo my entire adult life.”

“Which has been immeasurably shorter than the lives of the people who created the orb!”

Varric gathered his courage and thrust his head and shoulders through the tent’s front flap, clearing his throat loudly as he did do. Two heads swiveled to stare at him, two sets of eyes narrowed and focused on him. They had their murder-faces already on.

At least they were wearing clothes. It wasn’t as bad as walking in on Hawke and....well, several people over the years, because she wasn’t very picky and she had tended to treat his suite at the Hanged Man as her own personal love nest.

“Yes?” Shepard asked him curtly. Maker, he sometimes wished he were taller, or everyone else was shorter. Though he supposed if she smote him where he stood, he’d make a smaller pile of goo for Solas to clean out of the bedclothes later.  

“So, you know how kids hate it when mommy and daddy fight?” he asked them.  

The little line between Solas’ eyebrows deepened, but neither of them said anything.

After the silence dragged on and the air seemed to trickle out of the tent, Varric cleared his throat again and scratched at his neck.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much all I’ve got,” he admitted. He ducked back out of the tent. At least they weren’t yelling anymore. The other people around the tent tried to pretend they weren’t watching him. 

Shepard followed him out of the tent. She looked dirty and tired, but otherwise the same shitkicker he’d come to know.

“We’re moving out at dawn,” she said. “Strip the camp.”

Solas emerged behind her, standing a pointed several feet away.

A sergeant standing watch nearby banged her breastplate with her fist.

“Aye aye, ma’am. Where are we going? Nobody has given us any orders since we arrived.” 

“It’s on my orders,” Shepard snapped. “We’re headed north.”

She looked at Solas and frowned.

Shepard turned back to Varric.

“Tell everyone else I had a ‘holy vision’”-here she used actual finger-quotes, which Varric found unexpectedly charming-“and I expect us to find some kind of abandoned fortress to regroup in. Is that about right, Solas?” she said, turning back to him.

“You’re the Herald,” he said serenely. “You’re in charge of all holy visions.”

Shepard made an indelicate sound.

“Anyway, first order of business is finding me some new clothes. I have bad guy all over me, and whoever had those mirrored leather pajamas set out for me can go fuck themselves.”

* * * 

Cassandra kept a firm grip on her faith. She was not one, like Leliana, to see the Maker’s will in the fall of every leaf and death of every sparrow. She accepted the Chantry’s teaching that the Maker had left them. She had seen too much of the evil of the world to believe that the Maker was acting directly in her affairs. Her faith, instead, was directed towards her hope that if she chose the right path, she might be part of redeeming the people of Andraste and thereby draw the Maker back to them.

But when she saw the Fereldan king and Tevinter apostate carrying in the prone body of the Herald- alive, despite a dozen reports of her death in a ball of fire- something in her had said yes, oh yes, blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow. In their blood the Maker's will is written.

When Mother Giselle led the camp in singing hymns of prayer and thanks, Cassandra felt something of the old thrill run through her veins- that faith like a deep drought of water on a hot day that filled the soul to bursting. She believed in the Herald, as she had believed in Divine Justinia.

It was just hard to reconcile that holy feeling with the woman wearing the cast-off clothing of a Tevinter mercenary and now singing what she informed Cassandra were “Alliance marching cadences” whilst jogging through the snow towards a vague destination listed on no map.

I wanna be a Forest Ranger,

Wild squirrels are my only danger.

I wanna go to Yellowstone.

I wanna kill a pine cone.

Forest Ranger?

Squirrels and danger!

I wanna be a Forest Ranger…

Cassandra was doing her best to seem unruffled for the benefit of the rest of the Inquisition. They had at least two weeks of supplies- they could indulge this “holy vision” a bit longer.

The Herald’s inexhaustible stamina brought her to the peak of hill before the rest of the company, Solas just behind her.

Casssandra saw the Herald stop short and throw her arms wide in surprise.

Solas crept up next to her. 

Abruptly, the Herald grabbed the apostate by his tunic and drew him, flailing, to her.

She kissed him thoroughly, ending with a loud ‘smack’ that even Cassandra heard as she trudged up the hill behind them as swiftly as her fatigued legs would take her. 

“What was that for?” Solas asked, sounding dazed.

The Herald laughed. When Cassandra reached the crest behind them, she understood the woman’s reaction.   The view was, after all, a little romantic.

“Solas,” said the Herald. “You gave me a castle.”

Chapter Text

Even as a ruin, Skyhold was a gem. Born on the new colony of Mindoir, Shepard had never seen a building older than her parents until her third year of service in the Alliance. The Citadel, of course, was older than any known sentient species, but the Keepers had kept it in such perfect repair that you could never see its age. Even Shepard’s infrequent shore leaves to Earth had never afforded her the opportunity to visit anything like a castle on her military salary. 

She wanted to run her fingers over every brick, catalogue each pane of glass, trace every carved stone gargoyle. 

The children of Earth built this, she thought. Without mechs, without blueprints, without motors. They want to build great things. Their hearts and hands reach for the sky even when they’ve lost the tools to let them touch it.

Whether it was magic or an extreme microclimate, Skyhold was nearly 15 degrees centigrade warmer than the mountains outside. Even the valley below, where Cullen’s enlisted soldiers pitched their tents, was above freezing at night. Rain, not snow, fell here.

She could grow crops if she wanted to. Did she want to? Did she have someone reporting to her whose portfolio might include sugar beets? She loved sugar beets.

Shepard kept a tight grip on Solas’ arm as she explored the keep. He knew this place. His head tilted towards windows before they crossed thresholds. His legs didn’t need to measure the stairs as they climbed towers. He hadn’t just seen this place in a dream. He’d been here, maybe lived here. And Shepard’s mind catalogued this fact, concealed by her giddy smile.

Complete quarters for nearly a hundred people in the keep alone, perhaps expandable to nearly 500 once the roofs were repaired. Leliana’s scouts had already reported that once a few minor rockfalls were excavated and a few days worth of grading work was complete, they would be within two days travel of Edgehall and the Fereldan trading network.

Shepard had immediately volunteered to go and use her biotics to assist, but Leliana had firmly instructed her to remain with the bulk of the Inquisition and give some kind of major address to regroup the Inquisition after the loss at Haven.

Shepard was not accustomed to making prepared speeches. Sure, she could give the St. Crispin’s Day talk as well as any other Alliance officer and convince balky soldiers to charge a hill when necessary, but her more formal remarks had always been drafted by a public affairs officer. Shepard’s Alliance-funded college degree had been in ancient literature, and her soldiers had rarely appreciated the Cato the elder call-outs in her addresses. 

Ashley had been the only one to ever get it. Tennyson. She would quote Tennyson, for Ashley. “Beyond the utmost bound of human thought . . . “ That would be a good line.   She would use that.

Shepard had considered outsourcing the speechwriting to Josephine, but she knew that if she did, she would get back a warm, encouraging piece of writing informing her people that the Inquisition was dedicated to the rebuilding of their institutions and the return of order. That was not the message Shepard wanted to give. That was not even what Shepard wanted for these people. Institutions were all well and good- Shepard was a soldier, after all- but an institution was only ever going to be as successful as its goals. And the Chantry, from what Shepard could see, was dedicated to the suppression of mages and elves, the military opposition of the Dalish, the Qunari, and the Imperium, and the preservation of feudalism. Ferelden and Orlais were hereditary monarchies dominated by a landowning elite. The Grey Wardens were a lawless death cult. Dubious foundations for the erection of rocket launching pads.

Of course, Shepard thought, it was easy for an outsider to stand back and throw stones at the world order. But Earth had confronted, and overcome, similar issues. Shepard had human history- not to mention turian, asari, salarian, and even batarian history- as a teacher. So she was not going to help them put their world back together. She was going to tell them how to build something better.

She didn’t know if all of her companions would be with her once she told them what she planned. Most had a nostalgic cultural connection to the Chantry; even Cassandra, who could freely criticize its faults, thought of reform, not dismantlement, as the solution.

But Shepard knew that corrupt institutions rarely reformed from the inside out. There were too many people invested in the continued corruption of the prior regime. Too many priests without useful skills, too many nobles who relied on the Chantry to buttress their disproportionate holdings of wealth. Shepard didn’t think that the Chantry needed to be dismantled, but it needed to be ignored.

This Inquisition could be the framework for the dissemination of the history and knowledge this world had forgotten. Shepard would take Mother Giselle’s advice and parcel out her truths in bite-sized chunks, and prepare this colony to meet the rest of the humanity once Shepard fixed her ship. This was the Inquisition, after all. What it needed to find was this world’s own past, if it hoped to have a future off of this solitary rock hurtling through space, disconnected from the rest of the universe. 

With these thoughts in mind, Shepard began to prepare her speech.

“I came here as a stranger, but the longer I stay, the more I recognize myself in every one of you . . .” 

* * *  

Sera was sweating like a whore in the Chantry. Appropriate, that, since Sera was pretty sure the Maker’s eyes were on her. Right now. Looking at her. Looking at her friggin’ thoughts, which were not holy.

She didn’t care for speeches. Nobody she knew was capable of talking for more than five minutes and not saying at least one thing that was stupid, or wrong, or a lie, or just boring. Thus, when word came around the camp that everyone was supposed to gather ‘round and get ready to see the Lady Herald tell them all what they were going to be doing, Sera had taken the precaution of boiling a large bag of chestnuts before finding a seat on a ledge over the crowd. The chestnuts would keep her hands warm, she could eat them, and if Shepard started talking real nonsense, Sera could throw them at her.

The first bit of the speech was pretty much as expected. Soldiers, dead, sad. Corypheus, alive, bad. Inquisition, here, good. Advisors, named, thanked.

Then Shepard had turned on her glowy arm. Not the green fist of death, the orange arm of…visions. Shepard projected images over the crowd, and started talking about her past.   A big spinning ball that Shepard said was her birthplace. A big metal ship that Shepard said could sail through the sky. A bunch of weird monsters Shepard said were her friends.

Shepard told them about an “Alliance” between hundreds of suns full of other monsters. Laws against stealing, killing, slaving. Likely a load of shite- Shepard hadn’t learned how to fight like that in some peaceful fairy kingdom full of butterflies.

The crowd liked it, though.

Sera played with a hangnail. It was a nice story, and the moving air pictures were funny as anything, but it didn’t have much to do with the price of fish eggs, did it? Everyone had a fancy story about where they came from. Oooh, we slept hanging upside-down from fancy crystal trees! We farted through silk every morning, whether we needed to or not! Sera gave about as many fucks about Shepard’s fairy story background as she did about the elves’.  No fucks.  No fucks for this Alliance, blah blah, we used to be great.  

Then Shepard said she was going to talk about the future. More pictures. A dwarf child looking over a tank full of vegetables growing in liquid. A human man with his arm glowing like Shepard’s, healing a sick child. A Qunari man driving a small metal ship through the outskirts of Val Royeaux. A figure in some kind of puffy, bubble headed-armor stepping out of a ship in a strange town, approaching a creature with a cat-bird face. The figure removed its helmet.

Sera’s stomach seized up like a rock. Her cheeks went hot while her arms went cold. It had Sera’s face. Shepard put her face on the daffy moving air picture meeting the cat-bird monster.

The bag of chestnuts dropped from nerveless fingers into the crowd below.

It had to be demons. Right?   Only demons would fly into the sky and meet with monsters. Right? Shepard was daft if she thought Sera would go tipping into some giant metal coffin to piss lightning around the moon. The Maker could definitely not approve of Sera getting her own little metal ship and fucking right off of this mountain.  Right? Right?

 * * * 

Shepard hadn’t bothered to lock the door. Her door. His door, once. She’d obviously heard him coming, but left it to him to explain his presence in her bedchamber. Solas had been so wrapped in his own head as he had stormed up the perilous board steps to the room at the top of the highest tower of Skyhold that he had barely considered what he would say or do once he reached her.

She was lying on a makeshift mattress on the floor of the chamber. A few bits of furniture had been salvaged and scattered around the room.   Nothing of Solas’ had survived these many millennia, of course. But to see Shepard lying where his bed had been- he hadn’t considered how it would feel, to see her here. Unreal, perhaps. Like a true dream. Like his visits to her memories in the Fade. A person and a place out of time.

Shepard was projecting another scene before her- Solas’ grasp of her language was still evolving, thanks to Glyph’s careful tutelage, but he thought the subject was a “Mansfield Expedition” involving some lost tribe of humans. An inquiry for another time. He shook his head as though to clear all extraneous thoughts from his mind.

Shepard smiled at him. He fought the part of him that wanted to smile back, to put aside his anger and lean down over her to kiss those smiling lips.   Fool. He was a fool to want her.

His anger was ancient and eternal. He could not allow it to sputter under the weight of his growing obsession with this woman. Human, or as good as. She had no reason to help him restore a world she clearly would consider inferior to her star-spanning empire of alliance and diversity.

Wisdom’s voice came to him in his thoughts- is it, though?  

He didn’t know enough. Glyph had not yet showed him enough. He had not yet decided. He and Shepard were aligned in the defeat of Corypheus and the investigation of the connections between his world and Shepard’s. Any decision on whether to support the re-establishment of relations between them should await a fuller understanding.

Which was why he stormed up here like a petulant child, he reminded himself. 

“You cannot promise them things you do not know you can grant them!” he told Shepard.

The smile fell off of her face. She turned off her projection. She bonelessly rolled up to her feet, coming to stand several feet away from him.

She was wearing Cremisius’ cast-off tunic and leggings again. Ridiculous, that nobody had found her proper clothing yet. Solas’ clothing was humble, by design, but exacting in its fit and cleanliness. She had no reason not to shine like a gem.  

Shepard tilted her head to one shoulder and then the other, like a boxer preparing for a match.

“Let me have it then, Solas,” she said simply. “Happy to hear you out. What should I tell them? I didn’t tell them they’re all likely descended from a group of homo sapiens sapiens on Terra, since that seems like a sensitive subject with you. I didn’t tell them they’re a bunch of savages for living like they do. I didn’t tell them their Chantry is all a load of feudalist propaganda. I told them their destiny is to go to the stars. What’s the problem with that?”

“It won’t work,” he told her harshly. “You can’t just tell people their society is rotting at the core. They have no outside framework for understanding. If they haven’t lived your world, they can’t see what’s wrong with their own.”

Shepard shook her head.

“That’s not true, though. Everyone I’ve met is proof of that. Sera’s one marseillaise short of storming the Bastille. Iron Bull is a one-man exposition on the wonders of miscegenation. Varric apparently helped blow up a church? And even Cassandra rebelled against her entire military structure to promote reform. Everyone in the Inquisition is here because they want change. I’m just trying to show them what they can change into.”

“You think that they can set aside every value and erroneous belief that has shaped their understanding that easily? That they can change their essential natures?” Solas paced restlessly, talking with his hands. Shepard stood her ground, swiveling her head to watch him move about the room.

“Perhaps I am not quite as pessimistic as you about human nature. Elven nature. People’s…you get what I’m saying,” Shepard told him. “I’ve seen people change, Solas, when they are given the chance. My…Liara. She was an archeologist. She studied old cultures. She would have loved this place. But when war came, she put that aside and started running a spy network that would put Leliana’s to shame. She had to become harder, you see? But it goes the other way, too. I’ve seen mortal enemies learn to work together. I’ve seen contract killers become saviors. People can surprise you, but do you know what? I think people do what you expect them to do. So you have to expect them to rise above, to solve their problems, and to get better. That’s how I think people here are going to change.”

He hadn’t noticed her start to move until she was close to him, in his space. She pressed one hip up against him, and loosely circled his biceps with her hands.

“But did you really come up here to ask about my brilliant plans to introduce representative democracy to Thedas, Solas? Because it seems like you’ve been angry at me since Haven,” she said, ducking her head and pressing a kiss to the corner of his jaw.

“You are too reckless with yourself,” he said, teeth gritted. “Your entire insane plan rests upon your force of will alone.”

“And yours,” she said, tilting her head, and kissing the opposite side of his neck.

“You are managing me,” he accused, body responding under her hands and mouth. 

“I’m showing you we’re alive, Solas. And that life takes you surprising places, if you let it.” 

He relaxed his body slightly, let his hands rest on her hips. Chased her mouth down with his own, bit down hard enough on her lower lip to make her suck in a breath of air.

She batted his hands away when he reached for the lacings at the neck of her shirt, and started peeling him out of his own.

“I thought about just going under your tunic, but I was afraid I’d get lost under there,” Shepard teased. That wasn’t the first time she’d criticized his clothing. Did it stand out more than he’d thought? 

“Says the woman wearing men’s undergarments,” he pointed out.

“It’s not Krem’s underclothes I’ve been trying to get into,” she said, making him groan. He could not believe he was letting a human woman who uttered such atrocious come-ons unlace his pants. Well. He needed to be more honest with himself, if he was going to keep up with her. He’d thought about this a time or twelve.

Shepard tossed his shirts over her shoulder, pushed his pants down over his hips, and sank to her knees without ceremony.

Solas sighed when she took him in her mouth. He hadn’t had this in a long time. And Shepard didn’t play any games, wasn’t coy, wasn’t submissive. Instead, she just looked up at him, smiling, happy. She was here with him, reminding him that his flesh would never live anywhere but in the instant.

He closed his eyes and focused on the exquisite feeling of her mouth, the soft slip of her hair through his fingers. He was sure she could tell when the moment was close, but he tightened his grip on her hair, tried to push her away. But she hooked a hand around the back of his knee and held him close, drew him deeper. He swallowed his words, anything else that might have spilled from him in the moment. You are so beautiful. I have never known anyone like you. Vhenan.

She rose back up, helped him pull his trousers shut. He liked the proud smile on her face, the flash of her teeth after wiping the back of her hand over her mouth.

She pulled him with her to her makeshift bed, and he allowed himself to fall down beside her. She had secured a clean coverlet of fox fur, and drew it over both of them.

He couldn’t be anything but polite or considerate as a lover, so he pressed his face against the side of her neck and ran his hand over her taut stomach and between her legs. They both had their eyes shut when he finally brought her, gasping, around his fingers. Perhaps they both found true sleep there, tight against each others’ bodies, for a while at least. But he made sure to be gone before she awoke.

Chapter Text

“…and this one is Lady Ermentrude,” said Leliana, pointing at the last miniature.

“Darling,” said Shepard. “I like the little spot she has on her forehead.” 

Shepard had originally climbed up to the top of the rotunda to inquire after Leliana’s raven network. Communications were going to be the biggest drawback to their new HQ as long as they were without instantaneous transmissions. Shepard thought magnetic telegraphy was well within their technological capability, but installing a wire network would take far more manpower than she currently had at her disposal, and the wires would of course be an immediate target for sabotage. But when she came up to ask about the reach of the raven network, she had found Leliana cooing at the birds and calling them by name. This was a side of the redhead she had not yet seen demonstrated.

Which was how she had come to find herself sitting with the woman and considering the little gilt book of exquisitely painted portraits of Leliana’s nugs one by one. 

“I left my tiny friends in care at Val Royeaux, but I could have them sent here,” Leliana said. “Marchioness Lilly-lou was about to pup, last I heard. I could give you a little nuglet.”

Shepard suppressed a shudder. 

“That is so generous,” she deflected. “But no, I’m afraid I would not be able to give it the care it would justly deserve.”

Leliana gave her a sympathetic pout of her lips, then got a sly look in her eye.

“Perhaps your attention is already absorbed by a different cuddly, hairless creature with pointy ears?”

Shepard choked.

“You know he’s right downstairs, Leliana. And I don't know if you've noticed, but sharing about his personal life is not his favorite pastime.”

Leliana waved a hand dismissively.  “I know exactly how far my voice carries.”

Shepard sighed. “Is there a question there?”

“No, just an observation. It is surprising, after all. I did not think he was very fond of humans.”

“He’s not. I think he’s put me in some different classification.” Shepard turned up her palms and shrugged.

“And I believe you mentioned that your world has no elves?” Leliana pressed.

“It’s not like that. It’s not like…I’m a human and he’s an elf. We’re both people. People with a lot of mileage. You know, after you go to enough different places, meet enough different people, you stop seeing the shell. It doesn't matter anymore.  You spend 15 minutes talking with a hanar and you forget he’s a floating jellyfish. He’s just some guy trying to smuggle illegal weapons mods.”

Leliana looked skeptical. “You had relations with a…jellyfish?” 

“Well no,” Shepard laughed. “The logistics are a little daunting. I never asked the one asari I knew who liked hanar how she made that work. But the point I was trying to make is that little things like race, gender, even species- they’re not the obstacles to closer understanding that people make them. You just see what’s beautiful about someone, instead of what’s different.” 

Leliana leaned forward, rested her chin on her clasped hands. 

“I think I know what you mean, there. I wish you could have met the Hero of Ferelden. She’s a Dalish, and never met a human until a month before she became a Grey Warden. Turned out, we all fell a little in love with her. And I think she felt the same way.” 

“I’d like to hear more about her, soon,” said Shepard. “She’s a good example of the different races coming together to do something important. Like Varric’s Champion. A mage who protected a whole city.” 

Leliana coughed.

“I believe that Varric’s account of the Champion may be a bit tainted by…authorial bias. But perhaps we will have a chance to judge for ourselves,” she said.

“Oh? I thought Varric didn’t know where Hawke was?”

“That is certainly what Cassandra thinks. That he just…misplaced the woman he followed into the Deep Roads and spent ten years chronicling.”

“When you say it like that, Leliana, it almost sounds like you don’t believe him.”

Leliana smirked at her, and pointed out the window towards the approach to the Skyhold.  “We shall see. When his…friend arrives.”

 * * *

Shepard decided to stick very tightly to Cassandra throughout the rest of the day. She’d grown fond of the chestnut-haired dwarf, and she thought that being prepared to intervene might prevent an exsanguination.

Cassandra was oblivious as Shepard devised various tasks and discussions which had to take place along the front ramparts, in view of the gatehouse where Varric had been casually revising his manuscript for the entire morning. 

They reassigned Warden Blackwall to the training of the new recruits. Now that they were beginning to establish forward camps around both Orlais and Ferelden, Cullen had far too much on his plate to personally oversee muster and marching. 

They decided that Dorian would continue to supervise the mages and report to Cassandra, along with the few Templars under the command of Ser Barris who had been straggling in from the defeat at Therinfal Redoubt.

They appointed Madame Vivienne to lead a group to the University of Orlais to recruit whatever artificers, scholars, and alchemists might be willing to work for the Inquisition in exchange for Shepard’s download of various treatises on mathematics, chemistry, physics, and engineering.

All the while, Shepard tried to keep an eye on the front gate traffic. She eventually managed to bring the conversation around to Hawke without tipping Cassandra off to the reason for her inquiries. Luckily, Cassandra was even less subtle than Shepard, but happy to discuss the Tale of the Champion.

“I must have read it a dozen times. It goes a long way towards identifying the roots of the mage and Templar conflict, of course, but it is quite an excellent novel apart from the political questions it addresses,” Cassandra told her. 

“Oh? Adventure, battle and all that?” said Shepard, squinting at a solitary figure in black and a pony who were coming over the last rise. 

“Well, certainly there are some thrilling fight scenes. But the centerpiece of the story is the tragic romance of Marian Hawke and the apostate Grey Warden Anders,” said Cassandra.

The dark figure resolved into a woman in armor, and the pony into the biggest war dog Shepard had ever seen.

“Hawke was a lone refugee when she met him. He was with her in the Deep Roads when she lost her younger brother to the Grey Wardens.”

Varric stood up and threw out his arms in welcome. The dog jumped on his chest with his front paws, knocking him down. It bent over him to furiously lick his face. The dark figure doubled over in apparent laughter.

“Then, an evil necromancer killed her mother. He was the only one she had left to comfort her.”

Varric struggled to his feet, then tackled the black-haired woman to the ground. There was some wrestling, which Shepard watched with interest.

“And yet he betrayed her in the end. He attacked her when she went with Varric to Corypheus’ prison, and then he arranged to destroy the Chantry and murder the Grand Cleric without her knowledge.”

The woman had managed to get the upper hand, and appeared to be trying to sit on Varric’s face. The dog was bouncing around them and barking excitedly.

Cassandra’s face was solemn, and honest-to-God tears sparkled in her eyes.

“She executed him with her own hand, to save her city. She had to choose her duty over her love.”

Shepard drummed her fingers on the battlements. She didn’t want Cassandra to follow her line of sight, but it was hard to ignore Varric and Hawke rolling around in the grass beyond the forecastle.  They didn't look like they were coming in any time soon, so Shepard decided to steer Cassandra back to the main keep.  

“Sometimes sad stories have the best endings,” Shepard said.  

Chapter Text

Skyhold would never be quiet, not with the hordes of workers erecting scaffolding, pounding boards over holes in the masonry, and carrying out an age’s worth of trash, but it felt, if not calmer, then emptier without Shepard and her entourage. Solas told himself that that the quiet was welcome, and the lull was necessary. Indeed, he had requested to be left behind when Shepard had drawn out a plan to rescue a group of soldiers from the Fallow Mire Avvar and then meet up with Hawke and her Grey Warden contact in a small human settlement in the center of Ferelden. Neither unpopulated swamps nor human villages held any interest for him, after all, and Shepard required no assistance against mere humans or even demons or undead. 

The night before Shepard, the Seeker, and her two archers departed, he’d volunteered to stay behind to monitor the renovations at Skyhold, and braced himself for both suspicion and disbelief. Instead, he’d seen only a flash of…disappointment? It was quickly smothered under Shepard’s ready assent. He’d forgotten that Shepard had never questioned his competence at anything based upon his race. The disappointment had been harder to reconcile. Rather than pursue the emotion further, Solas had instead locked the door to Shepard’s chambers behind him and spent the rest of the evening with his head buried between her thighs. She was not the only one to have trained in management.

So now Solas had at least two weeks of freedom to pursue his own goals, whether or not they intersected with those of the Inquisition. Overseeing Skyhold took up minimal time. He’d consulted with the finest architects in Elvhenan for its construction, and even stripped to a skeleton, its bones remained strong. Mason Gatsi was more than capable of handling physical repairs, and Leliana and Josephine had lost no time in drawing the cooks, armorers, leatherworkers, and other organs of the fortress together from across Thedas.

But Solas was grateful for the opportunity and plausible motive for speaking to many members of the Inquisition. Few, of course, would be suitable for recruitment as his agents, but simply knowing who knew what, where lines of loyalty and obligation lay- those would be valuable bits of knowledge in the days to come.

The Inquisition’s new herbalist seethed with thwarted ambition. He was careful, in their first conversations, not to tip his hand and agree too strenuously with her denouncements of the Orlesian humans who had never given her credit for her advancements. But the rapport they developed was useful. She would receive a visit in her dreams soon from a large white wolf.

“She doesn’t want his brandy, unless it’s from his lips. She would be happy if he brought it to her in the garden. She wishes she could show him the night-blooming jasmine. Dark, moonlight only shining on the white petals. The sun wouldn’t hurt his eyes.”

Cole was less interested in stirring revolutionary spirits in the herbalist than in resolving her sexual tension with the dwarven bartender. The idea was repellant, so he gently redirected the spirit of compassion to the comforting of the soldiers who had lost comrades defending Haven.

The rest of his time he spent in his small cell, speaking to Glyph while awake and to Fade spirits in his dreams. Glyph knew more than any spirit of knowledge he’d ever consulted. The little droid was indefatigable, incorruptible, and endlessly patient with his ignorance. The only problem was the gap between Shepard’s time and his own. Glyph could tell him the entire story of Shepard’s war- and had, several times- but it did not know why Shepard was on Thedas any more than he or she did. The only source he had not yet queried was the message from Liara T’Soni.

As if that last mercy would forgive your betrayal.   As if she would look at you except to strike you down if she knew the half of what you keep from her.

Glyph knew a little of an Andromeda Initiative that had departed Shepard’s homeland shortly before Shepard’s final campaign began. Liara T’Soni and her predecessor, a “Shadow Broker,” had only managed to infiltrate the lower levels of the group, and knew generally of the colony ships and route they planned to take. It was not, according to Glyph, particularly near Thedas. Solas studied the faces of “Jien Garson” and “Alec Ryder.” Human but subtly different, like Shepard. They were meaningless to him.

Glyph, like Shepard, theorized that his and every other sentient species on Thedas was descended from the Andromeda Initiative. But when Solas pressed it for proof, it could only request “more data for analysis.” The idea was disturbing, to say the least, and he had not resolved to accept it as truth based upon the mere supposition of strangers to this world.

He believed in cause and effect, in evidence, in wisdom. He knew he was stubborn but not rigid. He had turned his back on everything and everyone he’d known before. He would hold no truths sacred against contrary thought. This was just…hard. He thought it far more likely that only the humans had come from Shepard’s homeland, either shipwrecked, like Shepard, or as colonists. The elves and dwarves were simply too well adapted to the world that had existed before his great mistake to have come from somewhere else.

He wished that he could bring Glyph to Wisdom, rather than ferrying their words back and forth. He wished he could consult the archivists of Vir Dirthara, but he had been unable to gain access to the library since waking. The little droid had provided valuable insights to him nonetheless. Spycraft techniques. Codes. Psychological profiles. Weapon schematics. Blueprints for engines, dams, bridges, and vehicles. Methods for destroying the same.

The histories were equally fascinating. When he’d led a rebellion against the Evanuris, he’d made it up as he’d gone along. He now had records of revolts successful and unsuccessful across a dozen species and thousands of years. Each, of course, led him down a hundred rabbit trails of unfamiliar terminology and technology, but Glyph was indexing the examples along such metrics as development, duration, and deaths.

They had not yet formed a plan that would be more effective and less lethal than tearing down the Veil, but he had hope, at least, that Glyph might assist him in minimizing the casualties when he did so.

At a minimum, he was turning over Shepard’s plan of reconnecting with either her homeland or the Andromeda Initiative as a possible solution to the problem of the humans. If they found their long lost brothers and sisters across the stars, why wouldn’t they leave Thedas? They were manifestly unsuited to this world, and even less so to surviving a world without a Veil. Perhaps they could mostly, or even all, be evacuated first. A bloodless solution.

As though your hands could ever be clean of it.

“Do any revolutions ever succeed without death?” Wisdom asked him.

They were speaking in Solas’ quarters in Skyhold. Not his new ones. His former ones. The stained glass suggested a dawn sky through white branches. The rugs were tufted in shades of green. The bed flickered between carved whitewood dressed in white linen and the pile of grain sacks Shepard slept on. He averted his eyes.

“Rarely to never. The more repressive the regime, the greater the bloodshed when it is overturned, I’m afraid,” Solas told his friend. “I must exhaust every avenue of research to determine the safest way of restoring Elvhenan.”

“Why?” asked Wisdom. 

Solas stopped his pacing. “What do you mean?”

“You are willing to sacrifice human lives to restore Elvhenan. Is there a specific number that you deem an acceptable loss?” 

“I have no confidence that any will survive the destruction of the Veil,” he said grimly.

“If you would see them all die, why do you attempt to minimize their losses? Is every single human life worth less than a single elven one?” Wisdom asked. 

“No!” Solas said, horrified.

“Then do you think you could divine a proportion?” Wisdom asked. “Three humans to one elf? More?”

“I….no.   That is not what I believe. I believe the humans’ lives have value. It would…diminish the value of life itself to compare the lives of any intelligent creatures,” Solas said. "They have value which can never be quantified."  

Wisdom gently took his hands in its own. Its smiling, genderless Elvhen face looked up at him.

“I think you need to think about this a little longer, falon,” it said. 

* * *

It was already dark by the time Cullen left the war room to trudge back to his quarters. He didn’t bother with a torch or candle. He’d walked the route via the rotunda several times, and there were no holes or gaps in the railing to trip him up. Bright lights hurt his eyes and aggravated his headaches. So when he opened the door to his dark office, he didn’t immediately see the figure seated cross-legged on his desk. He didn’t notice her until he reached for the flint and steel next to the small oil-lamp on his bookcase, and it lit of its own accord.

“Maker’s breath!” he shouted, reaching for a sword which was not hanging at his hip. He didn’t go armed into the war room, at Josephine’s request.

Not that his sword would have done him any good against Kirkwall’s Champion.

“Hello Knight-Captain,” said Hawke cheerfully. She waved a hand and every candle in the office burst into flame. 

He let out half his breath, the hand he'd placed on his empty sword-belt descending awkwardly from his hip.

“That’s not my title,” he said.

“No?” said Hawke. “I rather thought being a Templar was a permanent state of affairs. Blood in, blood out.   Or lyrium in, lyrium out, I suppose.”

Hawke was trimming her fingernails with a large, curved dagger. She’d apparently been doing so in the dark while waiting for him, and had spots of blood on her fingers where she’d done so inexactly. The sight of the mage with wet blood on her hands made the memories shudder in his veins for a moment, before he resolutely pushed them back down.

“I’ve put that life behind me,” Cullen said firmly.

“Wonderful to hear that,” said Hawke. “Fantastic. I suppose all those mages from the Kirkwall Circle stopped being mages too? Went home to their families, took up trade?”

“The ones not melded to First Enchanter Orsino’s ribcage, you mean?”

That was regrettable. He shouldn’t have said that. Hawke’s eyes glinted at him, and her smile showed more teeth. He’d never understood the attraction so many seemed to have for the woman. She was likely using the same dagger to cut her hair as she was using on her nails, and the strip of kaddis across her nose was the same color as the blood dripping off her thumb. He was certain that was the point of it. 

“Ah, there’s the Knight-Captain we all knew and loved,” Hawke said. “Tell me, Cullen, what did you do with the Tranquil? I know you must have made a few. Did you take them with you when you got your fresh start in the Inquisition?” 

Cullen stared at the surface of his desk.   It was clean. He cleaned his desk off every evening when he wasn’t taking lyrium. Organizing his documents was a very good thing to do while not taking lyrium.

“I brought Mistress Helisma with me,” he said eventually. “She studies corrupted animals for the Inquisition. Some of the other Tranquil left with the Templars when I disbanded the Kirkwall garrison.”

“Ah,” said Hawke, finishing with her fingernails. She began spinning the dagger on one finger through the hole in its pommel. She kept a close eye on its sharp tip, as did he.

She abruptly caught it with her other hand. More blood spread over her fingers. His heart began to pound. There had always been rumors about Hawke. Anders, Merrill- he had been fairly certain those two used blood magic. Hawke was more circumspect. She was as likely to gut someone with her bladed staff as she was to use her magic. There had never been any proof. No live witnesses, in any event.

He hadn’t taken lyrium for months. He couldn’t manage a smite to save his life. And he suddenly felt like he might need to.

“So that only leaves all the Tranquil who didn’t know how to dissect a blight-wolf or suck Templar cock,” Hawke said.

“I never-“ Cullen started.

“Did a thing to stop it? Oh, I know, Knight-Captain.   I know. Tell me, Knight-Captain, how many did you brand yourself?” 

“I don’t remember,” Cullen said shortly.

Hawke hopped down off of his desk. She was standing right in front of him now. She didn’t need to be close to him to kill him, but it felt even more perilous to be within arm’s reach of her. He imagined he could smell the coppery scent of her blood on her fingers. The veins in his head were pounding in time with his heart.

“Yes you do,” she hissed, face close to him.   

“…fourteen,” he blurted. “I made fourteen mages Tranquil, Maker help me.” His breath came like a sob from his chest. He closed his eyes. He heard, or perhaps felt, Hawke move away. He bent his head forward.   He thought she might be ready to kill him. He was not certain he cared, anymore. He hadn’t taken lyrium again. He wondered if he wished he could feel it one more time, if he was going to die. She might let him take the dose he stored in his desk, just to humiliate him. To see him ask for it. Beg.

Hawke was pacing around his office slowly. She didn’t seem inclined to talk again. Eventually, he cleared his throat.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked her, hoarsely. 

She considered that for a long time. He found that when she looked directly at him, he couldn’t look away. Her eyes were a bright, clear blue and ringed with black lashes. Maybe that was what her many notorious lovers had seen in her. Her nose was too long, and her mouth was crooked, but she did have lovely eyes. It wasn’t blood magic, he could see that now. It was just a force of personality that made you focus on her and not look away.

“You’re only ever the sum of the things you’ve done," she said crisply. "I’ll never get to stop being the woman who saw Kirkwall burn and my entire family die. You’ll never stop being the man who branded fourteen mages and watched Meredith nearly annul the Circle."

He hung his head again, and closed his eyes. Maybe he would take lyrium tonight.

Hawke approached him a final time. She was so close to him he could feel her breath on his cheek. She smelled like blood and wet dog. Like Ferelden during the Blight. 

“Make better choices in the future, Knight-Commander,” she whispered in his ear. Then she wiped her bloody fingers on his fur coat, and left his office.

Chapter Text

“…violent, drunken, oversexed, blood mage…”  Casssandra was listing Hawke’s faults.  She’d been intermittently harping in variations on this theme since they’d left Skyhold over a week ago.  It had continued down to the Fallow Mire- splash, splash, burn, stab, splash- up through the Hinterlands and on to Crestwood- trudge, trudge, spill, spelunk, takeover- and was now threatening to derail their game of Diamondback and the first hour of recreation Shepard had experienced in nearly two weeks. 

Caer Bronach might be Shepard’s least favorite castle on Thedas, as damp and smelly as it was, but the little room at the top of the stairs was dry enough, and even better, fully outfitted with cards and booze, once she’d sent her soldiers on their way.

“The kids at the flagpole were asking about bandits,” she pointed out to the foursome shirking their duties behind a locked door.  “Isn’t that your job?”  The dogfuckers vacated, and Shepard, Cassandra, Sera, and Varric had taken their places.  Diamondback was enough like bridge to appeal to Shepard, and Shepard and Sera versus Cassandra and Varric made for an evenly matched game.  If Cassandra would quit bitching about Hawke.  The Seeker was possibly more obsessed with her than Varric was, and since Shepard had taken the opportunity to listen to The Tale of the Champion via her omni-tool on the ride up, she knew that was saying quite a bit. 

“I liked her,” Shepard told Cassandra, trying to cut off the line of conversation.  Hawke had dropped into Skyhold like a brick of cesium into a birdbath.  When she and Varric had not been having loud relations at all times of day or night (actually, only Hawke was loud, who was to say Varric had even been in her room at all), she was goading the Chargers into drinking contests before noon, loudly reminiscing about Templars she’d murdered to Chantry matrons, challenging noble Orlesian men, women and children to duels (choice of weapon- mutton), and “training” her Mabari to ride the noble elven moose-creature Solas had imported from deep in the Dales.  Shepard wasn’t sure the Inquisition would survive an extended stay, but a little excitement was good for morale.

“You would,” Cassandra retorted darkly. 

Varric had been very carefully not responding to any of Cassandra’s complaints about his beloved, and was studying his hand of cards as though he wanted to memorize it. 

“Oh, quit talking about Varric’s wife,” Sera finally interjected.  “I’ve never griped so much about some bird unless I was planning on shagging her or murdering her.  And Varric won’t let you do either, so you might as well leave off.” 

Shepard approved. Cassandra sputtered helplessly. Varric drew another card.

“Married?” Cassandra demanded, wheeling on Varric.  “Dwarf, I am beginning to believe your Tale was nothing but creative fiction!” 

“Married?  Why would you think that?” Varric asked innocently. 

“She’s got your dwarfy noble house whatsit ring on a chain around her neck,” Sera pointed out. 

“That’s an Orzammar friendship tradition,” Varric deflected.  “For comrades in arms.” 

“Ohhhh, sure,” Sera said. She sidled closer to Shepard.  “Oi Shepard.  You wanna be Orzammar friends with me?  Best friends?  Comrades in arms or whatever?”  She leaned her head against Shepard’s shoulder and batted her eyelashes up at Shepard. 

“Well, since it turns out that I’m exclusively interested in elves . . .” Shepard said, trailing off expectantly.  She arched an eyebrow at Sera.  

“Oh, never mind in that case,” Sera said grumpily.  She pouted and played a trick.  Varric took another card.  Shepard was pretty sure he was cheating, but since Cassandra was barely following the game, all it did was even the playing field.

“It makes me wonder whether it is even the right woman,” Cassandra continued, as though nobody else were even speaking.  “I did corroborate many of the major events in your story with reliable historians. The duel with the Arishok happened. Cullen was there for the fight with Knight-Commander Stannard.  How could Hawke be the same person who defended Kirkwall?  A hero? The woman you wrote about was unfailingly brave, thoughtful, loyal….”

“She’s all those things,” Varric finally defended her. 

“But she…”

“Yeah, she’s all those other things you said too,” Varric said.  “Sometimes.  Nobody’s one thing all the time, Seeker.  I wrote the truth.  A truth.” 

Nobody was paying much attention to the cards, so Shepard took the opportunity to top off everyone’s cup and crack the seal on another bottle of rotgut.  She stared out the arrow slit window.  The rain had let up, at least.  If she squinted, she could make out the form of the high dragon crouched on the ruined keep over the next hill. 

Cassandra took visible control of herself for a few minutes and heaved a lengthy sigh.  “I just need to know, Varric, if the ending was true.  If she really….”

“He’s dead,” Varric cut her off.  “You don’t need to worry about any more chantries going boom.” 

Cassandra shook her head. “No, one lone apostate is hardly a concern at this point, even if he is an abomination.  What I meant is, when I read your book, I thought- what a woman is this.  Her own lover, and yet she was willing to execute him if it meant keeping order.  That’s the reason I spent the last year searching for her.  Because I thought she would be willing to do anything, pay any price, if it meant restoring order.  But having met the woman, I cannot believe she cared more deeply for the city that took everything from her than for a man she loved…?  Was it that?  Was her relationship with Anders merely a cover for your own?”

Varric’s face was a little peaked while he considered that, and he took several long swallows from his cup before responding.  He was clearly uncomfortable discussing such a charged topic with the Seeker, and Shepard would have spared him if she could have, but the Seeker had devoted a year of her life to chasing this phantom.  She thought Cassandra deserved some answers, at least. 

“Like anything else, it’s complicated, Seeker.  If you ask Hawke about it, she’d say that she was just clearing her ‘to-do’ list and he asked to move in.  Like, she asked him if he wanted a sandwich, and he responded that he wanted to be with her ‘til death did them part, and she folded.  I’m not sure I really believe that.  Hawke never did anything she didn’t want to do.” 

Varric took another slug of the whiskey and coughed off the burn.

“But by the time things got really bad, she’d all but moved out of her estate in Hightown.   She was living with me down in the Hanged Man. I’m not sure Blondie even noticed.”

Varric’s voice was still in his casual, storyteller cadence.  Removed.  Amused. But his knuckles around the cup were white with strain, and there were grim little lines around the corners of his mouth.

“You want to know why she killed him?  I don’t think she was really bothered by the violence.  She never got on with Grand Cleric Elthina, after all.  You have to think back to when she met him, ten years ago. Blondie was a healer.   But the first person we saw him kill was his own lover, after the Templars made him Tranquil.  He was afraid of Tranquility, more than anything.  Afraid enough to kill the man he'd loved.  Do you know what possession is like?” 

“The demon takes over,” Sera interjected.  “And there’s nothing left of you.”

“Eventually,” said Varric. “But it wasn’t like that in the beginning.  You see, demons and spirits all embody a real emotion.  Like rage, or desire, or…vengeance.  So at first you don’t notice.  Everyone gets angry sometimes.  We thought it was Anders’ obsession.  But it wasn’t Anders.  It was something eating Anders.   Year by year it ate Anders up, until there was nothing left of him.” 

Varric took a larger swig of whiskey.

“So when Hawke put him down, she wasn’t doing it for you, Seeker.   She was doing it for him.  Because his biggest fear was Tranquility.  Being cut off from feeling.  But that’s what he was, you see?  There was nothing left but vengeance.   No more love, not even rage, or desire.  Nothing of our friend left.”

They were all silent, staring at their forgotten cards and mostly empty cups.

Sera broke the tension with an echoing belch. 

“Good thing she had you, eh? And he had her. Shite, I hope someone who’s been in my knickers cares enough to put an arrow in my skull if I get demons in me,” Sera pronounced. 

Varric was still lost in the memory, clenching his hands around the mug.

“You ok, Varric?” Shepard asked him.  She put a hand on his wrist.  “Sera’s right.  Anyone can see she’s mad about you.” 

Varric’s hands unclenched a bit.

“Yeah, I don’t worry about that,” he said.  “Everyone knows dwarves ruin human women for all other men.” 

“Hear hear!” said Sera, thumping her cup on the table.

“I mean it,” said Shepard. “I don’t know what she felt for that terrorist, but she dropped whatever she was doing to come shack up with you in some castle in BFE as soon as you asked.”

Varric’s face softened, and his lips twisted into something that was nearly tender.  He drained the rest of his cup.

“Of course she did,” he said gruffly.  “We’re family.  We deserve it, don’t we?  Hawke’s family bit it, and mine was terrible in the first place, but the great thing about being grown-ups is you get to choose your family.  So now we’re a team.”

They all drank to that, clearing their cups.  Shepard stared into the bottom of hers. 

She would have killed Anders too, but for very different reasons from Hawke. 

 * * * 

The Viking was a quick journey from Skyhold, especially when he could travel alone.  Solas would have thought he would feel more free than he did, walking through the front gates of Skyhold with nothing but his pack and his staff.  All the guards knew he was an intimate of the Inquisitor, and none would have stopped him, but he took pains to casually mention to Josephine that he intended to scout the area around Skyhold for troublesome rifts, then gingerly extricated himself from her profusion of thanks. 

His duty was his usual companion during his waking hours, and he had thought himself used to a long day’s journey with only his own thoughts and memories for company.  He felt oddly-empty handed over that day’s walk away from Tarasyl'an Te'las.  He caught himself humming a song, and unable to conjure the words.  One of Shepard’s, no doubt.  “Nessun dorma,” he thought.  She hadn’t known what the words meant.  He should try to memorize it and sing it for Wisdom, poor singer that he was.  

He had grown used to Shepard’s company, that was it.  He felt her absence. 

A disquieting thought, when he was about her further betrayal.  

His agents brought him news of the Inquisitor before it could reach even Leliana.  Her fame was spreading.  Leliana and Josephine were anxious that she attend to the corruption among the Grey Wardens and the instability on the throne of Orlais, but Shepard was resistant.  One intercepted communiqué stated bluntly that Shepard “didn’t give a fuck about which Orlesian noble gets to be first against the wall when Sera’s people find out about democracy.” 

Obviously, Shepard had no interest in preserving a regime she saw destined to fail.  He would have to change her mind on the issue.  As short-term as any calm was destined to be, the people of Thedas would benefit from a reduction in the violence sweeping the Chantry states.  The Grey Wardens and the Orlesian monarchy might be corrupt and failing, but if they could be propped up until either he or Shepard could enact their sea change, thousands might sleep more securely in the interim.

Solas was traveling to the Viking because he did not know when he might have another chance to explore the ship unobserved.  Shepard had sent word (to him, this time) that she was going to review some dwarven and elven ruins near Crestwood, then swing back to Skyhold to resupply before a longer trip to the Western Approach and the elven ruins associated with the artifacts sought by the Venatori.  She hadn’t mentioned it explicitly, but he knew Shepard was pursuing the oldest history of the elves and dwarves.  She was looking for the connection between her world and his.  He didn’t know if she could find it, didn’t even mind if she did- but he was concerned that, in her research, she might find him.  Fen’harel.

He’d taken no pains to conceal his actions at the time.  He’d been the most notorious rebel in Elvhenan.  Even thousands of years later, echoes of his work still lingered, for anyone with the will to find them. 

He could not say what she would do, if she discovered his past.  She’d killed millions, from what Glyph had shown him.  How ironic, that perhaps the only person in Thedas with more blood on their hands than him had arrived so soon after his awakening.  Her cause had been just, her actions terrible but necessary- but so had his been.  No, he thought she would understand what he had done, if he told her.  It was because of what he still might need to do that he blurred his form and evaded the perimeter guards around Shepard’s ship.  He could not tell her about who he had been until he had decided who he might need to become in the future. 

The Inquisition guards patrolled a mile away from the ship, per Shepard’s orders.  His form was concealed by his magic after he breached their lines and approached the vessel.  Glyph unlocked the portal for him and admitted him to the sterile metal interior, where no eyes could see him.  He removed his hood and heavy traveling cloak and neatly folded them on a seat in the forward section of the small ship.  He set the casket holding Glyph down on the floor, and took a step back. The glowing drone emerged and floated up nearer Solas’ line of sight. 

Solas set the drone to reviewing the state of the ship’s systems while he unfurled his bedroll to slip into the Fade.  Unfortunately, this area was still devoid of spirits so soon after the Breach.  A rage demon had observed a bit of Shepard’s fight with the group of Templars who had accosted her after she awoke, but had not drawn close enough to offer anything useful. 

Glyph’s gentle buzzing awakened him several hours later.

“Report ready,” it told him.

Solas blinked the sleep from his eyes and pulled himself into a sitting position.  It was nighttime.  He should have specified that he would receive the drone’s report the next morning.  No matter. 

“Please proceed,” he told it. 

Glyph’s report was technical and occasionally untranslatable.  It had communed with the spirit of the ship, and derived that the ship had suffered some catastrophic event more than 10,000 years in the past before drifting to Thedas.  Although that report confirmed what both Shepard and Glyph had surmised, it was jarring every time he considered that Shepard had begun her story before the oldest records of his people around a star so distant it could not be seen. 

Glyph’s next statement caught his attention.  “Repairs are within this unit’s capabilities but will require at least 82 days of work.” 

“So quickly?” Solas said, intrigued.

“Yes.  This ship had self-repair functions but was limited by a lack of power and raw materials.  The element zero is the key limiting factor.  Obtaining sufficient refined element zero to power ship cores was difficult and expensive in the Milky Way.  According to my files, pre-spaceflight civilizations have never obtained access to element zero in the quantities needed for FTL travel.”

“Except the focus,” Solas murmured.  

“This planet is very rich in element zero,” Glyph reported.  “Similar worlds, like Thessia, inculcated their inhabitants with biotic abilities due to natural exposure.  This unit theorizes that high levels of element zero have resulted in the unusual phenomena you have reported.  It is possible that the inhabitants of this planet have been able to refine naturally occurring element zero to a concentration not usually achieved outside of quantum reactors.”

“Then would the focus- the orb Corypheus holds- be able to repair this ship, as Shepard surmised?” he asked Glyph.

“Insufficient data,” Glyph reported. 

Solas ran his hands back over his bare scalp. 

“Solar cells will support limited functionality prior to complete repair,” Glyph added.

That was new.  Solas threw off his bedroll and rose to his feet. He moved across the ship to sit in the prow, in the foremost chair.  Glyph followed him obediently.

“Show me,” he told it. 

The screens before him whirred to life, in a kaleidoscope of unfamiliar symbols and colors.  He would need to study this.  He needed more time.  He did not have enough time.

“What can I do right now, tonight?” he asked Glyph.

“The remaining power stores, raw material caches, and stored solar cells will support the repair of either the communications functions or the fabrication center,” Glyph told him.  “Any further repairs will require new inputs of power and material.” 

“Communications with whom?” he asked the drone to clarify.

“The range of this vessel’s communicators would be limited to the Andromeda Galaxy,” Glyph stated. “Passive reception would occur immediately, if any sufficiently advanced civilization were still broadcasting nearby. Directed communications could take days to years to reach their targets, depending on the location of the nearest communications buoy.”

“And you do not know if the Andromeda Initiative was successful,” he mused. 

“Presence of Earth-derived plants and animals on Thedas suggests affirmative answer.  But additional data required,” Glyph stated.

“And the fabrication functions?” he asked.

“Any technology with sufficient data for blueprints can be fabricated,” Glyph said. 

“Weapons?”

“Yes. Omni-tools.  Communicators. Also biologics.  Seeds.  Medicines.  This unit contains plans for nearly every Alliance and civilian system and can transmit them to the Viking.”

Solas tilted his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.  Shepard would never let him make this choice.  It was her ship, after all.  And he knew what she would choose.  She saw Thedas’ separation from the civilization that had birthed her as the root of its decay.  She thought all its problems would be solved by exposure to the technological and moral advancements of her society.  She would choose to restore the communications functions and invite whatever was left of her people to come and spread their ideas across Thedas. 

She would leave.

Even if it were a gamble that anyone was left to listen for her, she would take it.  She was desperate to know what had become of her world and her people.  She had never said that her time was free of problems, but she would risk it to lift up the people of Thedas to the star travelers of her time.  If she were successful, it was possible the humans would leave with her, and he could go about his plans as though she’d never been here at all. 

If he chose the fabrication functions, he could make the things his people immediately, desperately needed.  Weapons to win the long, cold war against human oppression, but also the seeds of Shepard’s society.  Omni-tools like Shepard’s that could spread knowledge across the globe.  Food, medicine, tools that might, mightrestore the lives that elves had enjoyed in the days of Arlathan without the need to tear down the Veil and risk the release of the Evanuris and the deaths of the humans. 

He would not lie to himself and say he was uncorrupted by self-interest.  His emotions clouded his thoughts- no, not only his thoughts.  His dreams, his sleep, his every waking moment. Desire. Guilt. Admiration. Fear. 

He remembered shaving his head in a fit of grief and rage after Mythal’s murder.  He’d considered the pile of braids on the floor, looking like the remains of some pitiful dead creature, and decided not to stop there. He’d burned Mythal’s vallaslin off his face, then set fire to his clothes, his fine possessions, even the rest of the temple he’d resided in.  He thought he’d burned all capacity for feeling out of himself at the same time.   

Shepard had not crept into his heart.  She’d battered her way in directly with the same focus she approached all obstacles in her path.  She might not even have noticed. 

He needed her.  Thedas needed her.  He was keeping her.   

“Glyph, restore fabrication functions,” Solas ordered.  “Use the self-repair routines.  Then delete all data related to our presence here.” 

Chapter Text

The Iron Bull saw more than most people assumed.  He spent hours a day holding court in the back of the tavern, in a position that did not even offer good sight-lines for the door and stairs.  He was blind on his left side.  He was far too big, and too horned, to ever be unobtrusive.  But the mere fact of his persistent visibility sometimes turned into a kind of invisibility.  People thought that watching and thinking were things he turned on and off.  They thought that if they could see him, they knew what he was seeing.  He saw more than they thought. 

He saw that Marian Hawke never had more than two drinks, no matter how long she stayed at the tavern, and that she feigned drunkenness the way a mother bird will pretend to have a broken wing to draw a predator away from the nest.  He wouldn’t want to be the thug who thought she was easy prey in a dark alley. 

He saw that Blackwall would occasionally slip into an Orlesian accent when calling marches on the training field.  

He saw that Josephine groped for a dagger she didn’t carry when startled by a loud noise.

He saw that Cullen slept half an hour less each night than the minimum a human of his age would require for peak performance.

He saw that Solas also watched, and thought, and spoke to more people than a homeless elven apostate might be expected to.  

He didn’t necessarily write all of these things down.  There were things the Ben-Hassrath needed to know, and things they didn’t.  Discretion was in knowing that difference.  He’d sent a long letter home going into expansive detail about the Inquisitor’s aquaculture methods, which involved great tubs of carp with cabbage growing on top.  He wished the Arigena the same joy of eating cabbage and carp stew all winter as the Inquisition soldiers.  She didn’t need him to write down the personal frailties of the Inquisitor’s inner circle if she could bolster the nutritional base of the Qunari diet exponentially. 

But when the Iron Bull saw Dorian and the small mage girl sneaking away together, and making a terrible job of it (posture hunched, looking around wildly, hands in pockets- utter rookie mistakes), he stopped watching and thinking and followed them. Mages were dangerous.  Tevinter mages were especially dangerous.  Kids, even mage kids, had to be protected. 

He tracked them to a blind alley behind the barn.  The scene before him was horrifying, causing him to suck in a panicked breath.

The two mages had somehow secured two chicken carcasses- ones which had already been beheaded, plucked, and dressed for roasting.

Dorian was calling the steps and muttering the tune under his breath.  The mage girl was making the chickens dance the gavotte. 

“DAH-dah-dah-DAH, bow to your partner, turn and spin…”  The headless chicken swept a serviceable bow, scraping one scalded foot off the ground. 

“What.  Are you doing.”  The Iron Bull spat out.

The two mages had been so focused on the corruption of two innocent fowl that they jumped when he spoke. Dorian gave a literal squeak of surprise.   He thrust the child behind him and pulled a barrier over both of them with a dramatic flourish of his arm.  Bull resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  He’d be able to count down the seconds until the barrier dissipated, and time any strike to coincide with the period before he could raise another.  Gesturing to cast a barrier was a terrible habit for a mage to have. 

The kid was a little spitfire, and immediately rushed Dorian’s arm to get out from behind him. Someone had attempted to braid her tight black curls away from her face, but had made a complete hash of the work. Little tendrils escaped to form a hazy corona around her face, which was dotted with dark freckles over brown skin. Her little white teeth had several haphazard gaps, which explained the lisp when she declared that, “It’th not demonth, it’th just necromanthy!”

“I do not think he cares,” Dorian said tightly.

“Damn straight, I don’t,” growled Bull.  “That’s unnatural.  And creepy. And wasteful.”

The chickens turned to look at him in headless contemplation, wings on hips.

Bull tried to mimic their posture, but the alley was too tight.

A faint giggle escaped the kid.

“I’m not good at lightning,” she stated.  “Or healing. Or tranthforming.  Dorian is teaching me necromanthy.” 

“You’re doing fine at those. You just have horrible teachers,” Dorian told her.  He shot a sideways glare at Bull.  “Which is why I took it upon myself to mind her.” 

The child pouted, sticking her tongue through one of the gaps in her teeth. 

“I’m nine.  I don’t need a minder,” she said flatly.  

“Oh sure, you can set things on fire with your mind and apparently loose a plague of rampaging roasts,” said Bull. “Also, you stole my chickens. It’s a good thing the Vint is keeping an eye on you.” 

“Your chickens?” Dorian asked, arching a delicate eyebrow over his frown.  “Just how are these your chickens?”

A chicken shook its bare little wing at him saucily. 

“Well, they’re not anymore,” Bull huffed.  “They were supposed to be stuffed with apricots and cornmeal, not…evil magic.  We were going to have them for dinner tonight.” 

Dorian snorted.  “As though your band of barbarian mercenaries notice what they stuff down their pie-holes,” he said.

The chickens high-fived each other. 

“You’re going to need to stop doing that.  It’s creeping me out…uh, kid.”

“Maia,” the kid said, shooing the chickens back behind her, and out of Bull’s direct line of sight. 

“Maia.  And anyway, it wasn’t ‘we,’ the Chargers, it was ‘we,’ you and me,” Bull said, gesturing between himself and Dorian.

“What- me?  In what possible world did you imagine we were going to be dining together?  On two entire roast fowl, much less?”

Now it was Bull’s turn to act indignant and arch his eyebrows.  He leaned against one wall.  

“You asked me to tie you up. I said I’d buy you dinner first. I thought, you know, we’d make a date of it.”

The Tevinter man’s doe-like eyes went wide and shocked in outrage.  He clapped his hands over Maia’s ears protectively.  The kid smirked at him. 

“I was not- that was not a request for an assignation!  How- how could you think I- you’re impossible!”

The Iron Bull knew how and when to make an exit.  Sometimes it was carrying aloft the severed heads of his enemies.  Sometimes it was in a cloud of ashes and smoke as the village burned to the ground behind him.  Today, he merely winked his good eye at Maia and pointed at the poultry. 

“The man with the dancing chickens thinks it’s impossible to have dinner.  Well, ball’s in your court, big guy.  I was prepared to deliver.  On all counts.” 

Dorian swallowed hard. Bull watched the muscles of his throat move and suppressed a grin.  He slowly turned around and sauntered off, making sure the Tevinter got a good look. 

“See you around, Dorian.”  He’d be seeing him soon, he knew. 

Chapter Text

Shepard returned to Skyhold with a crowd.  Aside from the religious fanatics and homeless mages and Templars who had been joining the Inquisition from the first, she was accompanied this time by a number of scholars, smiths, freeholders, and healers.  Solas appreciated those new additions to the Inquisition.  Shepard wanted to spread knowledge freely, for the benefit of all- that was all for the good.  Solas held few values more highly.

Solas did not appreciate the large number of nobles of varied nationalities who had begun to cling to Shepard’s entourage like ticks on a healthy beast. 

He did not appreciate the banquet Josephine had thrown for the visiting nobles. 

He did not appreciate Leliana making his attendance mandatory.

He did not appreciate being seated between two aging, addled dowagers, one of whom had made several attempts to fondle his thigh, and the other of whom spat when she talked to him, which was incessantly. 

He had the urge to respond to the lascivious one’s forays into his lap violently, perhaps with the oyster fork.  (It was unused.  Solas was experienced enough with banquets to distrust any shellfish served for a large group, in a mountain fortress especially.)

He settled for shooting a small spark of electricity into the woman’s left calf, causing the muscle to violently cramp.  She startled and looked at him suspiciously, but he took care to be looking skyward and murmuring what looked like prayers under his breath.  

That left the lady to his right, who was prattling about some dispute with a neighboring landowner, and had restarted the story several times upon gaining the impression that he wasn’t listening.  Unfortunately, he had no choice. 

Eventually she paused to gulp down more wine, and he had the opportunity to respond.

“I’ve found that it’s best to nip disputes with neighbors in the bud.  When Geldauran raided Elgar’nan’s hunting grounds, I responded by razing her timber holdings to the ground, salting the earth the trees had grown on, and encouraging spirits of despair to resettle in the area,” he told her, voice level and ordinary in pitch.

“Pardon?” the woman said, desultorily clapping a hand to the side of her elaborate coiffure.  “I’m a bit deaf in that ear.  Which is why it is especially distracting that Lady Forsythia has erected stone fences over the west pasture.  I believe they have discouraged the songbirds from migrating along the path this spring.  Birds are very sensitive to changes in their environment.  So am I….”

Solas grimaced and held out his glass for a servant to refill.

He should, he supposed, feel flattered that he had been invited at all, much less seated at the high table.  Shepard was only two seats down across the table, just out of comfortable speaking range. He suspected, however, that he had been added to the guest list merely so that Shepard could not complain that no elves had been invited.

It wasn’t as though he were unused to formal state occasions.  The Evanuris had often held feasts that lasted from days to weeks, with breaks only for rituals and speeches.  Solas had been thought to have exquisite manners.  Banquets in Arlathan had held a ritual of their own, with a diner able to express nuanced sentiments about his hosts, himself, and his fellow guests through a language of cutlery, gesture, and consumption.  He might amuse himself here in that language spoken by perhaps no other living being, but there weren’t nearly enough knives to say what he thought about most of the others present.  He drank another glass of wine instead. 

The apparent distress of Shepard’s other close companions was his only consolation.  Varric had been poured into a shirt that actually covered his chest, and was drawing pictures with his gravy spoon in his turnip mash.  Cassandra was viciously slicing her roast into smaller and smaller bits of meat, to the discomfort of her dining companion.  Commander Rutherford looked so pale he seemed in danger of fainting. Shepard was mechanically and efficiently cleaning her plate and the surrounding table of edibles.  She communicated with her neighbors largely by means of grimaces and pained smiles.  The candles turned her dark crimson hair to flame.  The low-cut evening dress she was wearing emphasized the strong column of her throat and muscles in her shoulders.  She was alive and vibrant in a way the stilted, pampered nobles at the table were not.  She was beautiful. 

As the dinner dragged on, he abandoned any pretense of not staring at her.  Eventually her eyes snagged on his, and she gave him a wide, warm smile that she tried to hide with a deep draught from her water glass.  He responded with an arch of his eyebrows and a glace at the doorway to the tower, behind the spiky throne Leliana had installed in the main hall during her absence. 

He knew she understood by the flush that spread across her ivory skin.  She drank again from her water glass.  She caught his gaze again. Later, she mouthed.  He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman as much as he did this one. 

Josephine, Cassandra, and Cullen had given remarks during the course of the dinner, with varying degrees of fluency, each thanking the assembled nobles for their past and pledged support of the Inquisition.  Cullen noted that the lady seated to Solas’ right was responsible for the tubs of fish in the courtyard, which did little to endear her to Solas. 

But these nobles hadn’t come to see the Inquisition’s war council.  They were there to see the Inquisitor.  Eventually she stood up and rapped a fork against the side of her glass for attention.  It wasn’t needed- every eye in the room was intent upon her.

“Gentle people,” she began. “I know many of you came here to Skyhold to learn about the Inquisition.  To hear about the Breach.  To understand the nature of our enemy, Corypheus.  To learn some of the technology I’ve been disseminating.  I hope you take a lot of that with you when you leave.  I want you all to learn about crop rotation, and germ theory, and high-density housing.  

But don’t forget that we still have a lot to learn about each other.  I don’t pretend that I have all the answers.  Because I’ve been amazed by the things I’ve seen since I stepped out of the Breach.  The golden towers of Val Royeaux.  The beauty of your Chant.  The strength of your people.

I won’t know what you want to learn, need to learn, unless you tell me.  You know more about what you need than I ever will.   I know, that when you look at your life, you see what’s missing.  And it’s not crop yields, or air conditioning.  It’s the sense that your future is going to be better than what you have today.  That your children will do more than you ever dreamed.  That you will know more tomorrow than you do today.  Well, that’s what we’re going to do together.

You don’t know it yet, but among you is a chemist.  Among your soldiers is a space navigator.  Among your farmers is an engineer.  Among the elves in your alienage is a poet whose words will be read on a dozen worlds.  You will see things your parents never imagined and that your children will think are mundane. 

Thank you again for all you have done for the Inquisition, and all you will do in the future.  I am just one person, and able to be in one place, at one time, and I rely on all of you to be the Inquisition’s hands in the rest of the world.  Use your hands as I would my own.  Fight the Inquisition’s enemies, spread the Inquisition’s word, and walk the Inquisition’s path.” 

She was incandescent with her vision.  Her power came from her sincerity, her utter lack of guile.  Every emotion she felt was etched immediately upon her face.  It was a gift to merely be in her presence, and he was a fool to squander everything she’d given him so far. 

When the guests rose from their seats, he caught her eye and moved deliberately to the tower door, then ducked past it, closing it behind him.  He leaned against the stone wall and waited, heart pounding in his chest. 

She barely startled when she opened the door to follow him, some minutes later, eyes widening for a mere moment before she shut them again as he pressed her against the closed door. 

“Upstairs,” she managed to gasp out against his lips. 

Her hand was hot and dry when she grabbed his and pulled him up the stairs after her.

He’d had some say in the decoration of her chambers.  As much as she admired the gilded excess of Val Royeaux, her personal style was functional. But function could have beauty, and the shining wood and unadorned white linen of her bed were beautiful to him. As she was. 

She pushed him playfully at the bed, and he let himself fall back.  She followed.  She leaned over him to kiss him deeply, and he reached up to cradle her face in his hands and tangle his hands in her hair.  All delicacy and skill fled him.  He merely sought to press his lips against her as he could, chasing the scent of her skin. 

“Solas, wait,” she said, pushing off of his chest.  She was straddling him across her bed, and she shook her head as though to clear it. He let his hands trail down her body to her hips and fought to clear the haze of desire clouding his thoughts. 

“I want more,” she said, looking at him seriously. 

Solas glanced down at where their bodies were pressed against each other intimately.  His cock throbbed between them in pace with his heartbeat. 

Shepard smiled and shook her head.  “No, not that- I mean, yes, yes that too, but I mean…” She sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes.

“Solas, we’ve never talked about this, about what we’re doing.  And it’s fine, really, if this is all there is.  I know what it’s like to need an outlet.  To…blow off steam.  But I want more.  And I thought I should tell you.  In case you might too.” 

She opened her eyes again and looked at him expectantly.  Her eyes were dark in the candle light, catching the occasional flash of ruby when she moved.   He pressed a hand back against her cheek, and she leaned into it.

“Why do you ask now?” he asked her with as much gentleness as he could muster with the mingled guilt and desire running through his veins.

Her lips quirked, but a darker emotion was in her eyes. 

“I’m over ten thousand years old.  Or thirty-three.  Or somewhere in between.  And all I have to show for it is some interesting scars and a head full of nightmares.  It’s not because I’m here.  Even if were still in the Milky Way…I had colleagues.  Friends, even.  But nothing for me.”

Her smile was sad.  “I hear Varric talk about Hawke, and I’m jealous. And it’s not that she has him, but that he has her.  I’ve never had a partner, Solas.  Someone who existed beyond the mission, someone who could be the mission for me.  I want to-“

And he cut her off by leaning up to kiss her, swallowing the rest of her words before she could break his heart even more. 

“Yes,” he told her. “Yes, I want that too.  I want more.”

Shepard reached back for the fastenings on her gown and let it pool down around her waist.  

In the first days when he was just Solas, he’d gone to bed with anyone he desired, or anyone who desired him and could add to Mythal’s power.  If he made his mind and magic weapons, what was it to him to make his body one more weapon, and the bedchamber another battleground?   It wasn’t until he became Fen’Harel that he realized he could not take with his body without being taken in turn.  He could not take without giving.  And he could give no more of himself when everything he’d ever wanted or hoped for was gone in that world. 

Shepard was a new world. 

She stood to push the rest of her dress off, then leaned back over him so that he could kiss her neck, then her breasts.  She hummed in appreciation as she pulled off his tunic and leggings.  She straddled him again, looking like more of a warrior goddess than any general of Elvhenan with the candlelight edging her muscular stomach.  

She was apparently ready to dispense with the preliminaries, but he caught her by her hips and pulled her forward up his body.  He encouraged her to spread her thighs and lean back against her heels while he brought his lips up against her and clenched her hips with both hands.  He tongued her there, shaping words of love against her core with his lips, until her breath came in pants, her legs trembled, and she cried out in her native language. 

He levered one hand under her knee and flipped her over onto her back.  He leaned over her, cradled by her thighs.  He trailed a hand around a breast and slipped it down her side.  Her skin was silk over steel, flushed and pink against her white sheets.  He looked down into her eyes, drowning in the joy and trust that shone from her. 

“Ar lath ma,” he whispered as he pressed his face into the side of her neck and pulled her leg over his hip.  He closed his eyes as he sank into her slowly.  He held himself back and tried to savor the slip of her body around him as he thrust in and out by inches.  He began to lose himself, though, when she wrapped her legs around him and dug her heels into his ass.  Thousands of years of walking through dreams, and he now just flesh, and heat, and want.  Elvish streamed from him as his rhythm stuttered; he couldn’t tell what he was saying, but he knew he couldn’t say it in anything but the language of his heart.  Shepard’s fingernails cut into his shoulders as his hips jerked forward as deeply against hers as he was able and came. The roaring of the blood in his ears drowned out the sound of her heart beating rapidly against his chest and their shared breath echoing through her chamber. 

Shepard gently disentangled herself from him and flipped him away from her so that she could lie against his back.  She held him loosely, but she brought one arm around his waist and ran a finger gently up and down the thin line of hair on his stomach.  When their breathing slowed, she pulled him closer and nipped the back of his shoulder lightly.  The message was clear- he was not supposed to leave.  Well, he wasn’t sure he trusted his legs to carry him down her stairs, tonight. He would stay. 

She could have his body, his heart, what dregs were left of his soul after everything he’d done.  It wasn’t a fair exchange for everything she’d given him, much less everything he’d taken.  But nobody had ever said that Fen’Harel cut fair bargains.  Only that he kept them. 

Chapter Text

“Maker’s balls, it’s hot out here,” Varric groused.

“Hotter than Cory-penis’ sweaty ass crack,” Sera agreed.

Shepard raised the stakes. 

“Hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock,” she said.

Sera closed. 

“Hotter than a fresh fucked fox in a forest fire!” she yelled, scattering a number of ravens who had been quietly feasting on the nearby corpse of some unfortunate.

“Ding ding ding, we have a winner,” Shepard conceded gracefully.  Sera stuck her hands in the air and shook them like a prize-fighter.

“Why are we out here again?” Cassandra asked plaintively.  “The road to the Western Approach broke off six leagues back.” She complained much less than Varric did, but she had to be feeling the heat worse than anyone in her plate mail.  Shepard had commissioned a number of loose, flowing linen robes and headdresses for this trip, which the other members of her forward team had happily adopted, but Cassandra remained grimly convinced that her body would at some point be the only barrier to Shepard’s early and gruesome demise. 

Shepard appreciated the thought, but after three weeks on the road, the woman was beginning to smell a bit ripe as bathing opportunities grew rarer. 

“The Forbidden Oasis,” Shepard declared, rolling the words dramatically around in her mouth. 

“You’re still not exactly selling us on this, dollface,” Varric said.  “Someone goes to the trouble of naming a place ‘forbidden,’ they’re scaring off the tourists for a good reason.  Take Kirkwall, for example.  ‘Sundermount?’ ‘The Wounded Coast?’  ‘The Bone Pit?’ ‘The Gallows?’  You want to go visit any of those places?  No?  Well good, let me tell you the stories of all the people Hawke killed there sometime.”

“Well, as Hawke is waiting for us back south of Griffin Wing Keep, we don’t need to be worried she’ll kill any of us today,” Shepard said lightly. 

“I believe Varric would like to know why we are attending to these rumors of ancient ruins personally when the Inquisition forces have sufficed for most of your intelligence gathering,” Solas said.

“Oh, Varric does?  Has Varric read any of the reports by Scout Harding?  Did Varric attend the mission briefing or was he still ‘walking the Fade to look for Venatori spies?’” Shepard teased. 

“That hardly sounds like Varric,” Solas said thoughtfully.  “It is almost as though you think that I personally did not wish to travel to the worst part of Thedas to look at some ruins of questionable relevance.”  

Sera blew a raspberry at him.  “If you two are letting it build up because you think we don’t want to hear you boinking, I’m all for you two just getting it over with.  Five minutes of confusion for everyone instead of ages of your weird flirting.” 

“To answer all of your concerns,” Shepard said, desperately grabbing back the reins of the conversation, “I would like to point out that our bad guy is 1. an immortal Tevinter darkspawn magister, who 2. blew a hole in the sky with an ancient elven orb, and 3. is infecting people with some kind of red eezo that Varric found in an old dwarven ruin.  So!  To review, we have an old guy using some old stuff to do bad things.  We are therefore going to look at more old stuff to figure out where the old guy got his old things.  Any questions?” 

Sera stuck her hand in the air.

“Other than Sera.” 

There was hardly any opposition worth noting as they moved through the warren of mining tunnels towards the temple.  Local wildlife was dispatched at range by Varric and Sera.  Venatori soldiers were offhandedly dispatched by Shepard’s biotics. She caught the last of these in a stasis field and gently suspended him a couple of feet over a drop of some hundred feet into a gully. 

“Hey friend,” she said casually.   He produced only angry moans, until she realized that his pointy helmet and the stasis field were impeding his ability to speak.  So she popped off the helmet and sent it tumbling into the canyon.   This was at the limits of her biotic ability, but she managed to weaken the field near his head to allow him enough freedom to speak. 

His first response was only a string of Tevene curses.  Her UT had been doggedly recording each encounter, and she had a pretty good idea of what he was saying, but it was hard to build a working lexicon when the only attestations she was working from were variations on, “you suck!  So did your ancestors!” 

“Your culture’s poetry is unparalleled,” Shepard told him.  “Color me impressed.  Now, I want you to know that I am actually not a very strong biotic.  I can’t keep holding you over this canyon for very long. I might….slip.” She let him dip a few feet before lifting him up.  He squealed and babbled another slur on her parentage. 

She wasn’t lying. Holding him up for this long was taxing, and she was sweating under her headdress.  But if she ran out of time, it wasn't like she had the ability to take prisoners out in the desert anyway. 

“Ready to tell me what you’re doing out here?” Shepard asked casually.  

“The Elder One…we are attempting to enter the elven ruin!” he finally yelled in Common. 

“Well, obviously,” Varric said.  “Nobody comes out here on vacation.”

“What he said,” Shepard replied.  “Why are you interested in the elven ruin?”

“The Elder One wants anything old and elven…looking for mirrors,” the Venatori warrior gritted out. 

“Mirrors?  What kind of mirrors?” Shepard asked him.   Just then, however, her lift effect failed, and the Venatori warrior fell screaming into the canyon below.  The entire party winced at the sound of the impact.  Sera was the only one who stuck her head over the edge to look down.

“Eww,” she said. “Leaky.” 

“No big loss.  More where that came from,” Varric said, shrugging his massive shoulders.   “Should we check out the temple?”

“What did he mean by mirrors?” Shepard asked her team as they continued through the mine. 

“Mirrors are bad news, dollface.  Hawke and I had a Dalish friend who was working on some ancient elven mirror.  It was full of demons, or darkspawn or something, and it apparently ate some member of her clan,” Varric told her.  

“Ate them?” Shepard asked skeptically.

“Yeah, just…whoosh, disappeared.” 

“Huh,” said Shepard, thoughtfully.  “You know anything more about it, Solas?”

“I am an expert on the Fade, Shepard.  I have never claimed to be an authority on all matters of the ancient elves,” Solas replied. 

Never one to be put off by a polite diversion in conversation, Shepard pressed him.  “But have you ever heard about ancient elves using mirrors for something?  Or Tevinters, for that matter?”  

Solas sighed and appeared to compose his thoughts.  “The ancient Tevinters were known to use some kind of mirrors for instant communication across long distances.  As they borrowed much of their technology and magical skills from the Elvhen, it stands to reason that the ancient elves used mirrors for such a purpose as well.” 

“Just communication?” Shepard said.  “That doesn’t account for Corypheus’ interest in it.  Or the mirrors ‘eating’ people.”

She looked down the canyon towards the stone carving decorating the outside of the elven temple.  

“You know, we’ve been finding bits of elven stonework all over the place, with lots of fantastic ogee arches.  Non-local stone.  But no roads. Isn’t that weird?  How’d they get the stone there without roads?  Did the elves have aircraft?”

Solas raised his eyebrows. “Aircraft?”

Shepard didn’t think that word had translated.  She put her hands together and mimed wings with her thumbs. 

“Yeah, you know, vroooom,” she said, demonstrating lift-off. 

“Not that I’ve ever heard of, or seen in the Fade,” Solas said, squinting into the distance.

“Sooooo,” Shepard pressed him.  “Maybe the elves were using these mirrors for transport?”

“It is a…viable hypothesis,” Solas admitted. 

Shepard grinned. “Liara would be so proud of me.  I made an archeological hypothesis all by myself. And there’s nobody left to give me peer review, so what I say goes.” 

She pointed at the temple. 

“Onward, team!  Let’s look for magic mirrors.  I am so fucking tired of humping all the way across Thedas every time some shithead decides to massacre a bunch of peasants.”

Her team looked longingly at the sparkling waters of the Oasis, and Varric eyed the little mini-hippopotamus creatures who were frolicking therein with a view towards a late lunch, but Shepard resolutely hustled them towards the ornate stone door. 

Shepard cooed appreciatively at the elven codex on the wall next to the front door. 

Arrogance became our end. Come not to a prideful place. Now let humility grant favor.

“First written Elven I’ve found- and there’s a translation!  It’s like a Theodosian Rosetta Stone.  Solas, does this look accurate to you?”

“The translation is as good as you could expect to find,” he replied, arms crossed.  

“So your name means ‘arrogance?’  What, did your mum run out of good names by the time she had you?” Sera asked him. 

“If you spent some time studying Elvhen, da’len, you would realize that it was a language dependent on context to illuminate meaning.  In my case, it meant ‘pride,’” Solas told her, rightfully huffy.

Shepard was beginning to regret bringing either of her two elves to the elven temple.  Killing things with the Iron Bull and Cassandra was always so peaceful.

Shepard activated her omni-tool and scanned in the Elven writing and its translation.  Solas was demonstrably uncomfortable with teaching her the dead tongue, but her UT would get it eventually.  Ritually important, she supposed.  Not for humans or non-believers to learn.  

Shepard had never asked Solas what he believed.  She sensed that the subject was a tender one for him, like anything relating to his past or upbringing.  She remembered hearing Ashley and Thane talk about their gods.  Treasured memories now of dead friends. 

Vu Shepard’s religion had been hard work and Sunday football.  Bridget Shepard’s religion had been ham on Easter and goose on Christmas. Jane Shepard hadn’t had the opportunity to absorb much of either before Batarian slavers had slaughtered believers and non-believers alike.  So she was a museum tourist of the religions of others. 

They set the shards in their sockets on the giant doors of the temple and entered.  The air was stale, and Shepard held back her team until her omni-tool indicated breathable gasses within. 

She confronted the series of doors demanding more shards to enter. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me.  What kind of temple is this?  What are they worshipping?” 

“Demons, duh,” said Sera, casually looting a funerary jar.  She used a disintegrating femur to fish a tacky gilt amulet out, and tossed it at Shepard.   

Shepard examined it more closely- no, still tacky- and dropped it into the inches-thick dust coating the floor of the temple. 

“Solas?” she said plaintively.

Solas was wandering off to fondle some eezo-rich statuary in the next room, but he glanced back over his shoulder.

“I believe Sera has somehow managed to hit upon it truly, Shepard.  This temple does not seem dedicated to any specific member of the elven pantheon, but rather to the performance of certain rituals designed to placate or protect against the darker forces of the Fade- namely, demons.” 

“So the elven religion taught techniques to protect its followers from demons?” asked Cassandra. “That could be a fruitful area of study.”  

“So long as the gods in question were appropriately appeased by their own followers, one assumes,” Solas said, pointing at the piles of skulls arrayed around the ritual statues. 

Shepard scoffed.  “I don’t trust a god that demands sacrifice. If it’s omnipotent, it doesn’t need it. If it’s not, why call it a god? It’s probably just some asshole with advanced tech and a hard-on for control, like Corypheus.  Or the Reapers.”

Solas nodded.  “Another viable hypothesis.”

“I’m on a roll today,” she said, grinning.  “Quick, Varric, can we play some Wicked Grace?”

“Not here, not now, dollface,” said Varric, who was keeping his crossbow out and primed.  For a dwarf who hated nature, he seemed to hate most enclosed spaces even more.  “I haven’t hardly had a chance to get acquainted with your coins from last night yet.”

Shepard didn’t have enough skull shards to open any of the other doors. 

She glared at the icy door angrily, hands on hips.

“Going to burn it open with the force of your stare, dollface?  Maybe if you get the Seeker and Chuckles to join with you, and your powers combine…” suggested Varric.

Shepard engaged her omni-tool. 

“You know, I used to be really handy with one of these.  Opened all kinds of locks.  No reason it shouldn’t work on this door,” she said, beginning to analyze the energies swirling through it.

“Except that you were presumably unlocking doors employing your own technology, not elven ritual magic,” said Solas, bemused at the orange cones spinning around her hand.

They all stood there watching for several moments, staring at the door while Shepard’s arm was enveloped by orange light. After several configurations and a few random sparks, the orange circles dissolved into a glowing pattern of green light.   The door opened with a satisfying ‘snick.’ 

Shepard crowed.  “I’m Commander Shepard and this is my favorite temple on Thedas!” 

The other members of her team gave a subdued cheer.

Shepard turned back to Solas. 

“Want to go loot the temple now?  Or, do we have to, you know,” she pressed her palms together, “placate the demons first?”  

Solas abruptly grinned and reached out to clasp the back of her neck.  He leaned forward to brush his lips against hers. 

“Fuck the demons and the elven gods both,” he said.  “May all their treasures be yours.” 

Chapter Text

“It’s awfully big, don’t you think?” Hawke asked hopefully.

“I’ve seen bigger,” said Warden Stroud, unimpressed. 

Anyone who knew Hawke would have told Stroud that letting her get bored was a dangerous proposition. Hawke and her dog required regular exercise, not to mention constant stimulation, or both grew destructive. Rabbit chewed boots.   Hawke killed things. 

Stroud had apparently not been so forewarned, or else he didn’t care, because he’d spent the week at the Western Approach forward camp mending armor, polishing his weapons, writing letters, and practicing combat forms.  Boring, boring, boring.  

Hawke had done the same for about the first two hours of the first day.  She was, after all, a big deal famous hero.  

“We must be prepared for battle,” she told Scout Harding.  “You never know when you’ll need to fight for your life.”

The woman barely spared Hawke a glance from where she was carving giant wooden spikes with an axe, for some reason. 

“Couldn’t agree more,” Harding replied, cheerfully.  “Any help you could spare on the fortifications would be…” 

“No time for that,” Hawke quickly replied.  “I believe I saw signs of darkspawn along the path.   Must attend to that first.” 

The darkspawn out here were few in number but prodigious in size.  Stroud had been unimpressed at her reports, so Hawke started dragging her kills back to camp like a housecat with a set of large, black, tainted birds.   

This had gotten Hawke and Stroud banished to their own camp on the other side of the Approach. Health risk, indeed, Scout Harding. What about the risk to Hawke’s mental health from being stuck out in the middle of the desert with Warden Stroud?

He was effectively her little brother’s boss, and she was married now, so she couldn’t do anything with him that she would usually do to pass the time under similar circumstances.

“Monogamy!” Sebastian had told her during the “mandatory” pre-marital counseling he had imposed. “Monogamy is Andraste’s gift in marriage.  It is a sacred trust, and a worldly blessing.”  Hawke had doubts on all of that, including the “mandatory” nature of any counseling given to her but not Varric, but as brothers willing to wed dwarves to notorious human apostates were not especially thick on the ground, Hawke had held her tongue and nodded enthusiastically. 

“And that starts…when? Is it the wedding?  The vows part?  Or maybe not until after the reception?” she had asked him. 

Aveline, once deep in her cups at Hawke’s hen party, had a better explanation.  “Monogamy is not about the number of people you want to sleep with.  It’s the number of people you want your husband to sleep with.” 

That made much more sense. It went a long way towards convincing Hawke not to send assassins to Val Royeaux each time a cinnamon and coal dust-scented missive arrived for Varric.  Varric kept his promises.  So did Hawke. Some promises.  Most promises.  This promise, anyway.

Hawke stuck the latest hurlock head on a spike (Stroud had the same view on camp fortifications as Scout Harding) and stood back to admire it.  It really was much bigger than the other six she’d collected since their exile to the western camp. She only needed a few more to decorate the entire barricade.  Maybe she’d decapitate some wyverns next, for contrast?

But before she got around to the wyverns, she was very happy to see the clouds of dust over the far ridge that heralded the Herald’s arrival.  And Varric’s.

“My precious pink princess!” 

“You know I don’t like it when you call me that in public, Hawke,” Varric said.  But he still copped a feel when she leaned (up for once, since he was on a ridiculous fat pony) to kiss him, so she knew it was all right. 

The Seeker, as usual, had no time or interest in the preservation of Hawke’s marital harmony, and started barking questions about the Grey Wardens and Venatori magisters.

“I have felt a few of my fellow Wardens congregating towards the ritual tower, but I do not know to what end,” Stroud informed the Inquisition team.  

Hawke was ready to chime in with the intelligence she’d been gathering. 

“There’s twelve of them, plus one Tevinter magister,” Hawke added.  “At least six mages.  The mages were armed, the others were not.  The Venatori have taken Griffin Wing fort, but it is lightly defended and they haven’t set up any of the arbalests.  They have a larger fortress in some ruins up the mountains to the north. A few of them are trying to penetrate some even older ruins just west of the forward camp, but there’s a kind of magic barrier repelling them.  There used to be a few Venatori dragging off refugees from the main road, but I took care of those.  There’s also a very lost Orlesian scholar roaming about to the south, but he’s probably been eaten by that very sexy high dragon you saw circling on the way in.”

Everyone was staring at her again.

“Something on my face?” Hawke said, rubbing her kaddis.

“What, did you think we all just followed her around because we liked looking at her ass?” asked Varric. 

 * * * 

Twelve dead Wardens later, the group was much subdued when they returned to the main Inquisition camp. Shepard still wasn’t clear on the purpose of the Grey Warden order, but it was clear to her that they were nothing more than dumb bodies for Corypheus to throw against her now.  Patsies.  Just like the bulk of the Cerberus forces Shepard had cut down.  It was a shame that the majority of the people who had shown up to kill her hadn’t started out wanting her head.  A waste, that’s what it was.

“…she’s so wonderful.  I mean, how thoughtful is this?  I don’t understand how she’s not taken yet,” Scout Harding was saying.  The only two people not quietly eating their rations were Scout Harding, who hadn’t been at the battle and didn’t know about it, and Hawke, who had been there but didn’t seem to care.  

“Well, she’d have more luck if she didn’t wear so many clothes. You’ve got to show off the goods a little to land a real woman, am I right?” said Hawke, flapping the open edge of Varric’s tunic.

Lady Josephine had sent a basket of luxury foods along with the standard field rations in the day’s resupply delivery.  Logs of goat cheese wrapped in grape leaves, little clay jars of comb honey, and bottles of spicy pepper sauce.  It was thoughtful.  But it was hard for Shepard to enjoy her dinner while she thought of the good soldiers who had lost their minds and died for the wrong master.  For the wrong cause altogether, if Solas was to be believed. 

Sera tossed a pebble at the fire.  “Stupid Wardens.  Supposed to be big heroes, yeah?  Spent too much time baking their brains in the desert and started summoning demons.” She chased it with another pebble, knocking over some coals and making the fire hiss and spark. 

“However mad their methods are, they have not forgotten their duty,” said Warden Stroud.  “They are simply blind to the influence of Corypheus. Once his infiltration of the order is demonstrated, the rest of the Wardens can be saved.” 

“Do you think so?” said Cassandra, her face gravely troubled.  “I cannot imagine how the Grey Warden order recovers from massive use of blood magic and demon summoning.  This will put them outside the bounds of all civilized nations’ law.”

“We are not bound by the laws of the nations,” Stroud replied, his moustaches shaking gently. “We have one rule, and one value, and that is to stop the Blights.  By any means necessary.”

“And the demon-summoners are always deciding what’s necessary,” Sera pointed out.  “Any bad thing someone does, they always think they had to do it because there was something else that was worse.”

“Sera’s right,” Shepard said, speaking for the first time.  Solas startled slightly- Shepard had been leaning back against his chest, caught in the loose circle of his arms.  “You can’t just say victory is the most important thing and you’ll do whatever is necessary.  You have choices, and you have consequences.  You have to be able to live with both.”

“But how do you know?” Cassandra asked.  She clasped her hands over her knees and leaned forward.  “You have to have some values that tell you which decision is correct. But who determines those values?” 

Shepard smiled wryly. “I confess I often end up trusting my gut.  Or the Alliance regs.  Except when I had to break them.  And a lot of the time, I trusted my superior officers. Which is what those Wardens did, sadly enough.  I wish I had the answers.  I guess you just have to ask people to think hard about what they’re doing, and where they think it will lead.  What did the Wardens think would happen to all those demons they summoned?  Seems like the dwarves wouldn’t have been too happy if they all got loose in the Deep Roads after they killed the last Archdemons.” 

Shepard’s answer was punctuated by a snore.  Hawke had slumped over into Varric’s lap, asleep.  Her face was childlike and untroubled.  Varric smoothed one large hand over her tangled black curls. 

“I guess that’s our cue to rack out,” Shepard said.  “Good night, everyone.  Varric, why don’t you take Hawke and Stroud back to Skyhold in the morning and circle up with Cullen on how we approach Adamant?  I’ll want to see a few different scenarios when I get back.  I want to go by those Tevinter ruins and then detour to Val Royeaux on the way back.  Heard and understood?”  

“Rah,” said Sera, who looked longingly at Scout Harding’s tent before climbing into the one she shared with Cassandra.  

“I’ll take first watch,” said Cassandra.  “I want to think about what you said.”  

Shepard and Solas retired to their own tent.  They’d been able to wash off the road dust and blood in the tepid stream flowing by the camp, so they were reasonably clean, for once. 

Shepard assumed her usual sleeping position behind Solas, arm curved around the dip of his waist and cheek against his shoulder.  She pressed her face to him, listening to the reassuring hum of his heartbeat. 

“You were quiet tonight,” she said.

“I am always quiet,” he replied. “Nonetheless, people frequently tell me to speak less.”    

“Not me,” said Shepard.  Solas briefly touched her hand where it rested on his chest in acknowledgement. 

“It’s a hard question,” he said after several moments.  “Are there ends so terrible as to justify any means to prevent them? Are there times when you must take drastic action, fully knowing of the consequences, but without intending them?” 

“It’s hard to say you don’t intend a consequence when you know about it,” said Shepard, thinking of Aratoht.  “But I spend more time worrying about the unintended consequences of what we do.” 

Shepard didn’t want to see bloody revolutions like the ones that had wracked Earth between the 18^thand 20^thcenturies.  But the current distribution of property- not to mention the oppression of the elves- was not sustainable either.  She could only hope that the interjection of the Alliance’s level of technology would raise the standards of living high enough and quickly enough to smooth the redistribution of rights without violence. 

Solas sighed.  “I suppose we must rely on wisdom in either case.”

Chapter Text

The Still Ruins were unsettling.  Dozens of people- descendants of the Andromeda Initiative, to Shepard’s best evidence- were trapped like insects in amber at the moment of their deaths.  Even more unnerving was the power implied by the stasis effect covering multiple acres and lasting thousands of years, if Shepard’s understanding of the timeline was correct.

The notes scattered around the ruin were written in an almost-comprehensible script.  Here and there a familiar root word nearly registered- but she couldn’t make out the gist of it.  Luckily, her UT could, once she scanned enough of the notes. 

The demon massacre suspended by the stasis had occurred almost two thousand years ago.  It was a stupendous demonstration of power.  These humans had accomplished feats with their magic that her people had been unable to achieve with technology. 

Some ancient nutjob named Helladius had thought he could draw power from the Fade.  He’s apparently been correct, if somewhat short-sighted, because that power had then been needed to seal him, his friends, and the horde of demons he’d ripped through the Veil into eternal stasis.  So Helladius had not been a good critical thinker, but Shepard was optimistic that the incredible levels of latent energy on this planet could be redirected by someone with a more careful approach to more productive use.  

The crazy Tevinter magister working for Corypheus had even suggested that her mark could be used to enter the Fade directly.  Whether the Fade was some kind of pocket dimension full of eezo, the collective consciousness of Thedas’ people, or both, it was a potential power source for both her own ship and future civilizations.  Once she had the current crisis resolved. 

Shepard didn’t pull the skull staff from its pedestal.  Nobody was in urgent need of a gory magic stick, and releasing the demons from their trap seemed unwise.  She wanted researchers to be able to come and study the frozen Tevinters once the area had been further pacified.  She was fascinated by the faces of the still men.  Like perfect statues made of diamond. 

But these men were far too young to be familiar. Two thousand years old still meant four hundred generations removed from Shepard’s people.  It made her feel a bit old, and lost, and alone. 

That night she searched for her own name on her omni-tool.  She’d seen the vid attached to the main article before- she was standing at the top of the Council Chambers, flanked by Kaidan and Tali.  It was the moment she’d become the first human Spectre.  Whoever had posted the vid had cut off the angry confrontation that had preceded her instatement.  She could barely recognize the woman at the center.  She looked younger.  Angrier. She still thought about the world in terms of right and wrong, fair and not. 

“What happened to that big gash across your face?” Sera asked, craning her head to see.

“Lost it in the war,” Shepard said, cracking a dark joke. 

“Har.  Then who’re the guys behind you?” Sera asked.  Shepard hadn’t spent any time showing Sera vids. She liked music, mostly.  And Shepard realized that she’d never told anyone the particulars of her story, beyond her military status. 

“Admiral Tali’Zorah vas Normandy and Major Kaidan Alenko,” Shepard said softly.  “They were friends of mine.  We fought in that war together.”

“Yeah?” said Sera, interested.  “What did they do?”

Shepard stared at the vid a little longer.  The sound was off.  Kaidan’s face was soft, and a little awed.  She had forgotten that he used to look at her like that.  He’d never had the chance to grow harder, just more scared. 

“They died,” said Shepard, shutting down her omni-tool.  “Everyone did.  Remember? This is ten thousand years ago.”  

“Not you, though,” Sera pointed out.  “You got frozen like those Vints back in the desert.  Maybe there’s other old people out floating around somewhere.”

It was possible.  If Shepard could get her ship working again, there could be records of what happened to all of her shipmates, even after 10,000 years.  The asari had detailed genealogies going back three times that length.  Surely the fate of the Normandy had been a fact of sufficient note to record.  Surely someone she knew had gotten a happy ending.   Liara, maybe.  Destroying the Reapers should have purged the taint of her mother’s betrayal.  Or James.   If the Normandy had survived, she could imagine a brilliant military career and a warm family life for him.  Was that what a happy ending was?  A year ago, she would have sworn that just stopping the Reapers from eradicating all intelligent life on Earth was the happiest ending she could hope for. 

“I can almost hear you thinking,” said Solas, rolling over in their tent to face her in the middle of the night.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Mmm, I don’t mind,” said Solas, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing her knuckles.  “I believe I know a way to take your mind of whatever is bothering you.”

Shepard laughed as quietly as she could. 

“I doubt Sera and Cassandra would appreciate their own midnight wake-ups,” she pointed out.

“Then come with me to that hill we passed, the one overlooking the vineyards,” he urged, unfurling her fingers so that he could kiss her palm.  His hooded eyes left no doubt as to what he thought they would be doing on the hill.

“What, outside? With the bugs? And the….outside?” Shepard asked, mildly shocked.   Over the course of her adult life she had become accustomed to experiencing the outdoors with the sterile separation of a faceplate. 

Solas answer was a grin she could feel more than see when he kissed her. 

“I’ll protect you,” he said against her mouth.

Making love in the outdoors had a lot to recommend it, Shepard decided later.  The faint night breeze was like an extra set of hands to caress her naked body.  The moonlight turned Solas’ skin to carved marble.  And if there were any insects in the soft grass on the hillside, they didn’t bother her a bit, because she made sure to be on top. 

 * * * 

The invitation, when it arrived, was on thick cream card-stock, with gilt edges.  It was hand-written, in a script that combined thick masculine downward slashes with fanciful capital curves.  The ink appeared black at first glance, but when held up to the light, it had tiny flecks of gold suspended within it. 

“I’ve never received a written invitation to an assignation,” said Krem, who had snatched the message straight from the messenger, and was holding it out of the grasping reach of the rest of the Chargers by dint of standing on his chair. 

“That’s because nobody would even believe you lot could spell a word that long,” said Bull, snatching the message back from Krem before his lieutenant could start passing it around. “And anyway, it’s an invitation to dinner.  A very formal dinner.”  

“Oh?” Krem said, fisting his hands on his hips and smiling at Bull like Feastday had come early. “It’s for nine o’clock at night. In his private quarters.  Sounds like it’s just…appetizers to me.”

One point to the Tevinter, Bull thought.  Whatever ground he’d taken with the stuffed chickens, the Vint was taking back by inviting him to dinner in front of his men.  He grinned.  This was fun. 

So he whistled a happy tune that evening and admitted nothing but dinner plans to the rest of the Chargers.  But he took a bath.  Scrubbed off all of the poisonous vitaar.  Put on a clean shirt. Ignored the sealed pile of letters from Par Vollen collecting on his nightstand.

Bull knew enough about Tevinter dining customs not to come empty-handed.  What exactly he should have in his hands was the troubling question. What did Tevinter magisters even like, other than blood magic and the lamentations of their slaves?  Bull considered his two options.  On one hand, he had a bottle of Qarinus red.  Bull didn’t usually drink wine, but he knew this label was considered passable to good.  On the other hand, he had a double length of gold silk cord salvaged from Solas’ renovation of the main hall’s window dressings.  He didn’t think that was considered too presumptuous for a first date with a Tevinter magister.   He decided to bring both.  A nice pair of bookends for the meal.

It seemed like all of the Chargers, most of the tavern regulars, and half of Skyhold were waiting to watch him walk the short distance to the mages’ tower.  Bull smiled at them genially.  He was a lucky man this evening, and he didn’t particularly care who knew about it.  Once in the tower, Bull passed a number of mages and Tranquil still at work, but these largely ignored him.  The invitation was for Dorian’s quarters on the top floor, which had been divided into an office and bedroom for Dorian in his capacity as leader of the Inquisition mages.   The last tower ladder opened into the office, in which a formal table had been set with candles, fine silverware, and a variety of dishes.  

Bull smiled again to himself and imagined sweeping those dishes to the floor.  Dorian’s soft brown skin would be set off beautifully by the white linen and candlelight.  He was certain this advantage had been perceived by the Tevinter as well. 

Except- the table was set for three.  Bull frowned. 

“I hope you like fish thauce,” said a voice below him.  “Dorian puts it on everything.”  

Bull looked down between his legs.  Standing at the bottom of the ladder, and gesturing impatiently for him to move on up was Dorian’s kid.  Maia. 

The door to Dorian’s bedchamber opened, and the man emerged.  He and Maia must have coordinated their ensembles- Bull didn’t think it was possible for two people to both hit upon violet brocade in the same universe at the same time by coincidence.

“Oh hello!” said Dorian casually.  “I’m so glad you could join us for dinner.” 

The “us” in that sentence clearly belonged to Dorian and Maia, and as Bull shuffled slowly into the room, Maia bounced up behind him to the central seat at the table.  She gestured for Bull to take the opposite end from Dorian.  

Bull pushed the rope further down into one of his pockets and produced the bottle of wine instead. 

“Ah, Gallantinus ’33,” said Dorian, examining the label.  “That was the last year before the poor dear lost a duel to Sylviana. The subsequent years all tasted faintly of scorched entrails.  This should be delightful.”  Smiling politely at Bull, he adroitly opened it, decanted it, and set it in the middle of the table. 

Maia looked skeptical, but held out her wineglass, which Dorian filled with a splash of the red wine and a great deal more of water from a pottery jug in the center of the table. 

She sniffed it carefully, took a small sip, and rolled the watered-wine in her mouth.  Dorian waited with an air of expectation. 

“Grapeth,” she pronounced. Dorian sighed.  

“Your palate needs work, dulcissima,” he said, beginning to serve her from the platters of food.

It was quite a spread. Bull recognized several dishes from Seheron, and fish indeed was a central ingredient.  There were squash blossoms stuffed with cheese and tiny anchovies, olives with peppers and fish sauce, and boiled eggs with chopped nuts. Maia gave Dorian a long-suffering look as he scooped bits of each in front of her.  She grabbed a piece of flatbread from a basket and resolutely tore it into little pieces.  Dorian rolled his eyes at her and poured out some olive oil from a little clay jug onto one of the small plates dotting the table.  Maia brightened and sopped it up with her bread.  Bull watched them carefully and began serving himself when Dorian did. 

“So, you two, uh, do this every night?” he asked. 

“Most nights,” said Maia. “Dorian doesn’t like eating alone. Usually we eat earlier, though.” 

“And I don’t like you subsisting on fruit preserves and cake,” Dorian added.  “If you eat nothing but sugar, you’ll never have more teeth than you do now.” 

“You don’t have…what do you call them down here, tamassrans?  People who take care of kids?” Bull asked.  The South was so barbaric. 

Maia shook her head. Her braids were still fuzzy and undefined.  But Bull recognized a three-bun Tevinter style as the inspiration.  Dorian was doing his best. 

“I had a thenior enchanter who took care of me,” she said softly.  “But in Redcliffe…”  she shook her head again and looked down at the table. 

Dorian swirled his wine in his glass, looking off to the side. 

“Maia’s parents could give mine a run at the ‘worst of’ title,” Dorian said.  “They turned her over to the Templars without even being asked to. We may ask to be adopted by wolves, once this is over. “

“Do wolveth have to eat fish?” Maia asked.

“I’m fairly certain they do, but they are much more lax on the subject of appropriate clothing than I am,” Dorian replied. 

Maia considered this. “Fair,” she said. 

“Agreed,” said Bull.

Bull hadn’t eaten with a kid since he was a kid.  But Maia was pretty easy to talk to, once you got past the necromancy and the unnatural dislike of seafood.  Dorian softened by degrees as well, and smiling shyly at Bull by the time the wine bottle was empty. 

Maia had propped her head on her hand, and was trailing the voluminous sleeve of her robe in her olive oil. Her dark eyes were flickering open and shut as she strove valiantly to stay awake. 

“I’m afraid she’s going to tumble all the way down the ladder,” Dorian whispered to him. 

“Nah,” said Bull, pushing his chair back from the table as quietly as he could.  “I can carry her.” 

He scooped her up as gently as he could.  She was about as big around as one of his biceps, and she smelled like strawberry jam. Her legs dangled limply over his arm. Tucking her against his chest, Bull started carefully climbing down the ladder.  

“She’s in the basement, I’m sorry to say,” said Dorian.

“Not a problem,” Bull told him. She hardly weighed anything.  It was a shame she didn’t have a real tamassran to take care of her. These southerners had kids so thoughtlessly, then didn’t even bother to look out for them. 

There were six stacked bunks in the basement.  Bull deposited Maia in the open one, which would have been identifiable in any event by the sky-blue velvet coverlet embroidered with snakes.  Tevinters.  Bull pulled it over her as she burrowed into her sheets.  The teenage apprentices already snoring in the other beds looked warm enough, but did younger kids need extra blankets?  He’d ask Stitches.  

Bull and Dorian tiptoed out of the basement apprentice quarters and up the ladder.  This was the main hall.  Dorian leaned against the wall and looked pointedly at the entrance. Bull smirked at Dorian until the man softened and let a small smile quirk his lips.

“What, did you want to tuck me into my bed too?” Dorian asked him with a lift of his eyebrow. 

“No,” said Bull. “That wasn’t what I wanted to do.” He crossed the small distance between them and ducked his head to bite gently at the defined column of Dorian’s throat.  He lifted his head and met the other man’s eyes. 

“But I have several other ideas for what we could do there, if you’re game.” 

It was a good thing Bull kept in such good shape.  Four more floors of ladders would have been an obstacle, otherwise. 

 * * *  

The desert had given way to Orlais’ agricultural heartland.  The road was flanked by chestnut and pecan trees, but the fields beyond were sprouting spring wheat and corn, or devoted to rows of neat grape vines just beginning to unfurl green leaves. The peasants here, humans all, looked relatively well fed and clothed.  The civil war must not have reached this area yet. 

The music of the day was Die Walküre.  Sera particularly enjoyed “the Ride of the Valkyries,” and was swerving her confused horse back and forth across the road like a demented bumblebee.  

As they neared the southern tip of Lake Celestine, Shepard spotted an overturned cart in the road flanked by a pair of soldiers in Inquisition green.  They waved to her vigorously.

Shepard rolled her shoulders back to loosen them.  It was a pleasant enough day for a spot of cart-repair.  She squeezed her heels to her horse’s flanks and the placid beast obediently kicked up to a bouncing trot to carry her forward to the cart. 

It was the second soldier’s face that warned her.  The first soldier had an ordinary, freckled face, and an expression that was open- even friendly.  The second soldier had less control over his features, and they twisted into something fervent, angry as Shepard hailed them.

When she saw the soldiers reach behind them, she opened her mouth to shout a warning to her team, but forgot how to slow the horse.  The two soldiers hurled their knives in unison, shouting something her UT failed to translate.  Shepard’s mind was still churning on how to stop her horse, and it took Cassandra’s mailed form smashing into her from the side to re-engage her mind on combat. 

Shepard rolled when she hit the ground, and came up with her biotics already flaring.  She charged the first soldier before she remembered that she didn’t have a weapon ready.  No matter- the Inquisition armor left the man’s neck unguarded, and Shepard’s fist slammed into it with enough force to crush his windpipe. 

The second one was on the other side of the cart, and reaching back for another throw. 

“Not the Inquisitor! She must be taken alive!” came a shout from far behind her. 

Cassandra had brought her horse back around from down the road, and she was galloping back at Shepard. Her sword arm was drooping towards the ground, but she had her shield up.  Shepard could see the soldier adjust his aim at the horse, so she threw a barrier over Cassandra and her horse both.  The dagger bounced off the blue shimmer around horse and rider.  

A heartbeat later, Cassandra crashed into the soldier shield-first, and if the force of the shield bash didn’t kill him, the horse’s hooves did. 

There was shouting behind Shepard.  She whipped her head back, searching for the two elves. 

Sera was down, some kind of javelin protruding from her abdomen.  Solas was standing over her prone form, lightning crackling in a circle around him.  Three horned forms were stalking just outside of the magical perimeter.  Qunari.  Stripped to the waist and painted in identical orange chevrons.  One hefted a spear and jabbed it into the circle experimentally.  Finding no resistance, he hurled it at Solas, who barely dodged.  

Shepard’s biotics were temporarily exhausted by her charge and the large barrier over Cassandra. She cast about for something, anything she could use as a weapon.  She kicked over the twitching body of the first soldier and pulled out the dagger strapped to his back, but she could hear Sera screaming.  She started running back down the road, lungs burning, arms pumping, dagger clutched in her fist, and panic rising that she was going to be too late again. 

She felt the tingle down her spine that told her that her biotics were primed again just as Cassandra passed her, still seated on her horse.  Cassandra dropped her shield and switched her sword to her left hand. Shepard timed her biotic pull to coincide with the moment Cassandra reached the trio of Qunari.  They were too heavy for Shepard to lift off their feet, but they were stunned long enough for Cassandra to behead one and then plunge her sword (off-handed, even) into the heart of a second.  The last Qunari was already toppling, downed by a slash of Solas’ staff. 

It was maybe five seconds after the battle was over that Shepard reached the rest of her team. Sera was making a horrible keening sound that caught in pops and bubbles around her lips.  Solas dropped to his knees next to her, and wrapped his hands around the javelin protruding from Sera’s belly.

“Don’t pull it!” Shepard gasped, reaching the two of them. 

“I know,” he said, teeth gritted.  “All I can do is immobilize it to keep it from doing her more harm.” 

“I’ll hold it,” Shepard told him, putting her hands over his.  “Make sure they’re all dead, then get the healing potions out.” 

“Of course,” he said, pushing up to his feet and picking up Shepard’s dagger.

Sera’s eyes were still open and panicked where they met Shepard’s.  Her breath was coming in pants, and her mouth was pulled open in a rictus slicked with pink.

“Hang in there, Sera,” Shepard told her, mind wheeling.  “You’re going to be fine.  I’ve got you.”

Her omni-tool could fabricate medi-gel.  Some. Maybe enough.  She barked the commands. The power cells had limited charge. The goddamned music.  She pushed her left hand to Sera’s abdomen and sent the output directly into the wound. 

“The Qunari are dead,” Solas told her when he returned. 

“Tal-Vashoth? Bandits?’ Shepard asked.

“No.  The blasted Qun,” Solas said. “They had orders on them.” 

Shepard would have to think about that later.  When her friend wasn’t dying.  Sera’s eyes closed and the fell blessedly unconscious, but Shepard didn’t think the small amount of medi-gel she’d been able to get into her would make the difference. Maybe let her die slowly of infection, not quickly of internal bleeding. 

“We have to get the javelin out.  Infection will kill her as quickly as blood loss.   Can you cauterize the wound?” she asked him. 

He looked at her sharply. 

“I can, but…Shepard. Can’t you heal her?” 

“Solas, I’ve never healed anything worse that a blister,” she told him.  “I’m as likely to kill her as save her.” 

Solas leaned forward and put one hand against her shoulder.  “Shepard, how do you think you recovered from your fight with Envy?  You were bleeding out the ears when they brought you back. Nobody thought you’d wake up.  You healed yourself.” 

Shepard stared down at Sera’s body. 

“You can hardly make the situation worse,” Solas said.  “She’s dying now anyway.”

Shepard took a deep breath. 

“I’m going to pull the spear out.  When it’s out, pack the wound with elfroot poultice and hold it down as hard as you can. Don’t let her bleed out.  I’ll do what I can,” she said. 

Solas soaked some sterilized linen rags in elfroot poultice and held them ready.   Shepard took a deep breath and pulled the javelin out steadily, as straight with the entrance wound as she could.  Dark blood welled along the wooden spear, which thankfully did not appear to have splintered.  As soon as it was out, Solas pressed down on the wound.  Sera did not move, and her color was very poor.  Shepard reassured herself that she could still see her breath lightly lifting her chest.  Why didn’t anyone wear proper armor here?

Shepard put her hands over Solas’, blood welling between their fingers.  She desperately sought in her memory for her sole conversation with an experienced healer, several weeks back.  How did she describe it?

She pulled power to her, trying to imagine element zero flowing through her body and turning into medigel. 

“You’re doing it, Shepard,” Solas reassured her.  “I can’t do it for you, but I can lend you my energy.” 

She could feel it- Solas’ power felt vibrant and somehow sharp, crackling with growth and life. She felt it wrap around her own tendrils of energy, and she directed it all into the hole in Sera’s abdomen. 

He was stronger than her. Shepard could feel his magical energy twining around hers like a friendly cat and flowing out through her fingers with more force than she’d ever been able to direct.  Shepard barely worried about conjuring her own energy, and focused on directing the transmutation of Solas’ force into the shape of healing. 

The flow of blood through her fingers slowed and eventually stopped.  Shepard wiped at Sera’s stomach with the sodden rags and found puckered pink skin below her fingers.  She didn’t know if she’d put everything back together in the right place.  She didn’t know if she’d cleaned out everything that could cause an infection.  She didn’t know if Sera had lost too much blood.  But at least she wasn’t bleeding now. 

“We shouldn’t move her,” Shepard fretted.  “Someone should go bring back a real healer, and a litter.” 

“Can Cassandra go ahead and bring back help?” Solas asked.

Shepard and Solas turned to look at Cassandra, who was still horseback.  Cassandra was vaguely palming her right shoulder with her left hand, staring blankly off into the trees framing the road.  Her lips were moving, but no sound was emerging.  She was slumping over so slowly that Shepard didn’t even realize what was hapenning until Cassandra began sliding out of the saddle. Shepard was not quick enough to catch her before she hit the ground in a clatter of armor. 

Shepard rushed to her side and roughly pulled loose her helmet.  Cassandra’s face was flushed with effort, and her pupils were drawn to pinpricks as they moved restlessly and without focus. 

“Anthony doesn’t…he’s not…Stop it!  Anthony! Anthony!” Cassandra muttered.  The name meant nothing to Shepard.  Shepard patted Cassandra’s body down, and couldn’t find any blood.  Had she taken a hit to the head?

“Take off her armor,” said Solas, still tending to Sera.  He was trying to drip a yellow spindleweed potion down her throat.  “The Qunari use poisoned blades.”

Shepard wrestled with the straps and buckles of Cassandra’s breastplate until it fell off her chest. There was a long scratch across Cassandra’s shoulder, just in the gap between her pauldron and breastplate. Cassandra had taken the dagger meant for Shepard. 

“Solas?” Shepard shouted. “What kind of poison?”

Solas face was grim. “They call it saar-qamek.  It causes hallucinations and convulsions.  I don’t know of an antidote.  Maybe someone in the White Spire will.”  He gently lifted Sera from the ground, carrying her in his arms without strain.  He was always stronger than Shepard thought.  His slender body was nothing but muscle, and his shorn head made him look older than the age his physicality would suggest. 

Shepard looked down at Cassandra, who was moving her head from side to side, and beginning to bat at Shepard with her hands.  Shepard pulled her off the ground and hefted her body over her shoulder.  Cassandra wasn’t physically injured, which would make it easier for Shepard to carry her.  Their four horses were milling around nervously.  Shepard didn’t think she could tie Cassandra to a horse- she’d heard about it, but never seen it done, and her limited experience with the creatures did not fill her with confidence.  She’d have to cut loose two of the horses and hope that the remaining two could ride double.  If not, it was going to be a long walk to Val Royeaux for Solas and Shepard.  It would feel even longer if one or both of their teammates didn’t survive the journey. 

Chapter Text

Shepard was pacing like a caged tiger by their second day in Val Royeaux.  Solas and Shepard had encountered Inquisition soldiers after a miserable day and a half of travel down the road.  Sera had remained unresponsive, and Cassandra had slowly worsened until they’d been forced to tie her hands to keep her from doing herself harm. Solas and Shepard had halted their torturously slow pace only as long as necessary to rest the horses or gnaw enough cold rations to fuel their pace.  When they were hailed by a group of Inquisition agents hunting a band of Orlesian deserters, there had been a tense standoff while Shepard racked her brain for a way to verify their identities and loyalties.  Eventually, they’d had the Inquisition agents strip to their skins and turn over their weapons before accepting their aid.  Sera had been slung into a makeshift litter between two horses, and they made only slightly better time towards the White Spire. 

At least the Inquisition soldiers had been able to spare a scout on a faster horse to ride ahead and prepare a group of healer mages, organized by Madame Vivienne, to receive them upon their arrival. 

Shepard had heard little word of Sera and Cassandra since handing them off to the Circle’s care. Solas insisted that Tranquil apothecaries and Circle spirit healers offered both the best chance of recovery, but Shepard remained grimly convinced that small issues like germ theory and accurate gross anatomy were bound to be overlooked. 

As for the two of them, Madame Vivienne had insisted on secreting them away in her noble lover’s townhouse as soon as she heard of the Qunari assassins.  While there was no precedent for Qunari striking so far south, stories of the havoc they had wreaked on Tevinter for centuries made them a formidable risk to the Inquisition and Shepard herself, if they had for some reason determined to become her enemies.  All Shepard needed at this point was more enemies.  She imagined what Garrus would tell her: “it took you six months to get every major faction in Thedas to start hunting you down? Amateur.  I could have managed it in three.” 

She could have really used a sniper to watch her back in this place.

The townhouse showed signs of Madame Vivienne’s hand: it was furnished in a tasteful palette of silver and robin’s egg blue, with furniture merging style and comfort.  The servants were discreet and exacting.  The chef had somehow divined both Shepard’s preference for fresh produce and Solas’ unexpected sweet tooth, and had furnished them with a procession of plum tarts, apricot oranais, and apple cakes soaked in rum since the first evening. The twin novelties of soft beds and warm food, however, failed to distract Shepard from her unprecedented separation from news and communications. 

Solas, for his part, was spending most of his time asleep.  Shepard knew, intellectually, that he was in the Fade, gathering information, and perhaps even communicating with other members of the Inquisition. This intellectual knowledge did not entirely quash Shepard’s irritation at her enforced idleness.  She knew it was unwise for her to venture outside without a support team.  She knew she needed more information about the size of the Qunari threat before they could formulate plans.   She knew that Solas had carried Sera in his arms for a day and a half, and had earned his rest.  But nonetheless, having no other outlet for her boredom and frustration, Shepard decided to shuck the long sage green velvet gown Vivienne had provided for her and crawl into her lover’s bed when the sun first crossed the horizon.

Vivienne, presumably knowing no better, had assigned them to separate rooms.  At the time, exhausted and filthy, Shepard had not thought anything of it.  She’d never shared quarters with a lover.  It hadn’t ever even been a question; Shepard had never owned real estate, unless Anderson’s apartment were counted, which Shepard had refused to do, and Alliance regs had been a sufficient impediment to keep Kaidan, or later Thane, from staking any kind of permanent claim to her space.  But now Shepard wondered if she should have claimed Solas in that moment.   If she’d hurt him by failing to casually direct his pack to the same room she’d taken.  

So now Shepard let herself in to his room while he slept.  She’d had a more innocent intent in mind at first- she told herself she thought better when she wasn’t alone- but after a few minutes of pacing and listening to him breathe, her thoughts were no longer innocent. 

Solas hadn’t drawn the heavy brocade drapes before retiring, and sun was beginning to pour through the white linen sheers, illuminating the faint pattern of freckles on his shoulders and chest.  Alone, Solas slept on his back with his arms pulled back behind his head.  No pajamas were in evidence; he saved those for daywear. He’d kicked off most of the covers at some point during the night.  The room faced east, and was catching the warm spring sun, so only one white sheet, pulled half up his chest, covered him.  Shepard carefully crawled up the bed on her hands and knees, gown puddled on the floor and forgotten.  Solas made a pretty picture in the morning’s white light- his face was austerely serene, and his pose emphasized the contrast between the definition of his muscles and the softness of the tufts of chestnut fur under his arms.

Shepard leaned over him and pressed a kiss to the soft skin of his bicep.  She sat back on her heels as he awoke in a rush of inhaled breath and seized magic.  She felt no guilt.  After he blinked rapidly for a couple of moments, Shepard felt him release his magic and relax again.  

“I see you’re already up,” he said drily.  He relaxed his arms and brought them around her, running his hands down her bare shoulders. Shepard bent and nuzzled into the warm space between his neck and shoulder, breathing in the sleepy scent of him. He pulled her down next to him, trapping the sheet between them.  With his free hand, he absently stroked her hair with his fingertips before rubbing the sleep from his eyes and grimacing as he suppressed a yawn. 

“Yes, yes, I know that twelve hours of sleep is hardly enough time to recover from the rigors of yesterday’s reaping of the pastry table,” she told him, nipping delicately at his collarbone. 

“You’re the Inquisitor,” he pointed out.  “You have people to do your sleeping for you.  I am one of them.” 

“Lucky me,” she said.  She gently ran her nails down his chest and stomach.  “Did you find out anything interesting in the Fade?”  Her hand continued its downward movement and crossed the edge of the sheet. 

“Always,” he said, closing his eyes again when she began to lightly stroke his cock through the linen.  “But nothing of relevance to the Qunari ambush.” 

“They were trying to take me alive,” Shepard pointed out, wriggling out of her undergarments and tossing them in the general direction of her dress.  “I assume they have live conspirators between here and Par Vollen.” 

Solas pulled Shepard’s hip towards him until she straddled him.  He leaned forward enough to nuzzle the skin between her breasts.  “Somniari such as myself are known in Tevinter, and thus to the Qun.  I suspect they have taken precautions.” 

 “But what do they want?” Shepard asked, gasping as he sucked one nipple into his mouth, rolling it with his lips and tongue.  “Do you think they’re allied with Corypheus?”  

Solas pulled his mouth off her breast and instead rolled both nipples with his fingers.  Shepard gave an involuntary twist of her hips against him, making him hiss. She braced herself against his shoulders.  

“Unlikely.  Corypheus seeks the return of the ancient Tevinter empire.  Qunari are the primary cause of the present empire’s decline.”  Solas pulled her higher against his chest so that he could kick off the sheet that separated their bodies.  “It’s more likely that they simply seek to control you,” he continued. 

Shepard reached between them to grasp his cock and run a thumb over the drop of moisture collecting at the head.  Solas leaned back against his pillows and watched her with hooded eyes as she shifted slightly to trace the tip of him along her clit and the wet heat between her legs.

“They could have just asked,” Shepard said, teasing him by brushing her inner lips along the underside of his shaft.  One of Solas’ hands crumpled a handful of the sheets, and his lips thinned. 

“Their spy has not asked you for anything?” he asked, voice still silky. 

“What, Bull?  Other than another round at the tavern, not that I’ve noticed,” Shepard said, finally fitting Solas’ cock against her entrance and commencing a long slide down it. 

“Any dispute with the Qunari can only distract you from your purpose here,” Solas said, placing both hands on her hips.  His fingers dug into her ass as he pulled her closer to him.  “You should respond forcefully, so as to gain space to move against Corypheus.” 

“Do you have some ideas on how to do that?” she asked, tracing the spot where their bodies joined with gentle fingertips. 

“Do what they fear most- destroy their advantage over the rest of Thedas,” Solas said, voice tightening. He flexed his hips to thrust up into her.  “Spread the making of their blackpowder and metal ships widely.  They will need time to regain the advantage.” 

Shepard ground her pelvis against him in circles until she found a rhythm she liked.  “I like it,” she said.  She watched his face, and the tightening muscles of his throat.  His eyes were closed as he rocked against her. It wasn’t quite enough friction. She grabbed one of his hands and brought it against her clit.  He obligingly caught her clit between the pad of his thumb and his knuckle, and was rewarded by a cascade of rippling muscles when Shepard came.  A rush of heat inside her and the sudden stillness of his face let Shepard know he’d found his own release as a result.  He left his hand splayed against her abdomen, but his body relaxed. 

His free hand rubbed gently against her lower back as he smiled up at her.  “It is always my pleasure to be of service,” he said. 

 * * * 

Vivienne’s raven from Val Royeaux had kicked off a hornet’s nest of activity back at Skyhold.  No sooner had Varric and Hawke arrived but they had been turned around and sent back to Val Royeaux to defend the Inquisitor, if necessary. Cullen had just commenced plans for an assault on Adamant when the potential Qunari threat had sent the Inquisition’s war council reeling for a defense against yet another threat they hadn’t seen coming. 

At least Cullen had some experience fighting Qunari.  Grey Wardens- Maker’s breath, he’d always thought they were heroes.  Lyna Mahariel had stormed Kinloch Hold when all seemed lost- a tiny thing, all blue tattoos and too much dark skin on display- she’d saved his life when he wasn’t sure it deserved saving, shouted the Landsmeet into compliance, and brought down an Archdemon with nothing more than her little Dalish arrows.  Carver Hawke had saved dozens during the Qunari invasion, and struck the final blow against Orsino, once the man had devolved into an abomination of blood magic and spite.  Even Warden Blackwall seemed to be doing more good than Cullen, these days, as he turned peasants into to competent Inquisition troops.  The man burned with purpose, clean of doubt. Cullen doubted everything, himself most of all. 

This wasn’t to say he appreciated the Iron Bull pointing it out to him. 

“You have to speak from a place of conviction, not just authority,” the big Qunari told him, leaning back in his chair. 

Cullen and Leliana had decided to summon him to Cullen’s office to answer for the assault on the Inquisition team.  Leliana was lurking in the shadows, leaving Cullen to question the admitted spy.  It wasn’t going well. 

“I am telling you that I would be justified in imprisoning you as an enemy of the Inquisition if you will not explain why your people attempted to assault the Inquisitor without any provocation at all.”

“Well, let’s unpack that,” said Bull, undeterred.  The man had claimed the largest chair in Cullen’s office, which still seemed likely to collapse under his bulk.  “First, I’m not sure why you haven’t imprisoned me.  This office is totally unsecured and you both know I could grab the Commander’s weapon before he could stop me.”

“You could try,” Leliana said smoothly, from the corner.

“Hey, I specified Cullen,” Bull clarified.  “I didn’t say I was going to top one of the women who stopped the Fifth Blight.  I haven’t seen you in action yet.  No judgments made at the moment.” 

Cullen didn’t bother to contradict them.  His reaction times were dulled from lack of sleep and the symptoms of lyrium withdrawal. He’d long had to accept that his sword arm was of much less use to the Inquisition than his leadership abilities. Supposed leadership abilities, anyway. 

“Second, I’ve been warning the Inquisitor since Redcliffe that there are elements in the Ben Hassrath devoted to keeping the gaatlok exclusive to the Qun.  She then blew up the most impregnable fortress in Ferelden in front of a few thousand onlookers, Vints included.  There were bound to be consequences.  I just didn’t know they’d make a grab for her.  Fuck, the letters I’m getting, half of them want to name her Arigena if she’ll share what she knows.  Which you should know, Nightingale.”

“Your letters are coded,” Cullen pointed out.

Bull waived an airy hand. “And she’s already broken the code if she’s half the spymaster I think she is.” 

Leliana neither confirmed nor denied his assumption.  Cullen tried to regain control of the conversation. 

“How many forces do the Ben Hassrath have in Orlais?  What kind of a risk is there to the Inquisitor now?” he demanded.

Bull scratched at his dark stubble.  “I really can’t say.”

Cullen stomped around his desk and did his best to loom over the Qunari, which was less effective given that the man was almost his height while seated. 

“You should know,” Cullen told him, “that there is nothing I would not do to keep the Inquisitor safe.” 

Bull turned his head so he could look straight at Cullen with his good eye.  “I do know that,” he said. 

“Do you think that we would scruple against torture, if we thought you were withholding information that could help the Inquisition?” Cullen demanded. 

Bull crossed his massive arms and leaned back.  “Yeah, I kinda think you would, Cullen.  Threats aren’t the best way of advancing an interrogation, anyway, and you’ve got to make them more specific to be effective.  Are you gonna rack me?  Well, I know the Inquisition doesn’t even have a rack.  Hot irons?  Well, I survived Seheron, you don’t really think that would work.  No, if I was going to conduct this interrogation, I would have worked on establishing a rapport, getting my feelings involved.”

“I do not require feedback on my questioning technique!” Cullen shouted at him. 

Bull looked put out. “Well, obviously you do, since you’re going about it all wrong, and if you’re going to be the guy the Inquisition sends out to do it, I want to give you some constructive criticism.  You’re not shaking your sword at some wet-eared recruit, you’re trying to break one of the most experienced agents of the Qun.”

Cullen gripped the edge of his desk behind him and tried to regain his composure.  This was surely not the role the Maker had meant him for. 

“Oh, leave off it, Cullen,” Leliana said.  “He doesn’t have orders to kidnap the Inquisitor, or he’d already have tried. If there’s a split among the Ben Hassrath, we’re better off exploiting it by keeping the faction that supports the Inquisition happy.  We’ll take him to Shepard and let her figure it out.”

“Smart,” said Bull, approvingly.  “I’ll pass along the antidote to saar-qamek, by the way.  Hate to see the Seeker suffer.” 

“You’re free to go,” said Leliana.  “Be ready to travel out tomorrow.  The Inquisition forces are going to rally west of Val Royeax.” 

Cullen turned his back to the Qunari and retreated behind his desk.  Leliana pushed off the wall as Bull stood to leave.

“Oh, but Bull?” she said in her musical voice.  “The people who have betrayed me are all dead now.  And I made sure they regretted their betrayal, before dying.  You would be surprised at how few body parts are strictly essential to life.”

Bull smiled at her. He pointed at her with his sausage-sized thumb and caught Cullen's eyes.  “See Cullen? Now that’s an effective threat.” 

Chapter Text

If she squinted, Shepard could imagine she was back at the University of Toronto.  Institutions catering to the education of young humans seemed to draw from an intuition that ornate architecture would instill a certain sense of respectful diligence in the students.  The young Orlesian nobles stick-fighting on the front lawn were doing their best to counteract that expectation. 

Vivienne had briefed Shepard on the University of Orlais and Celene’s reforms.  No elves or commoner students were in evidence as Shepard’s retinue approached the main amphitheater, but she supposed that people who had had to work hard to attend the University might be making use of the libraries or study halls, rather than the gardens. 

The University of Orlais was a gated complex of impressively arched and filigreed brick buildings just outside of the Val Royeaux city limits.  Green-tiled domes marked lecture halls and observatories.  Larger buildings with shaded-glass windows marked libraries.  Just outside of the fence, vendors hawked food and books to students in open-air stalls. It felt more familiar to Shepard than any place she had yet traveled in Thedas.

“Did either of you have the chance to study at a university?” she asked Cullen and Leliana, who flanked her on their walk to the main hall.

“Unfortunately, no,” said Cullen.  “My family is barely considered gentry.   Most Fereldan children are educated by the Chantry, if at all.  Only the very wealthy attend universities.”

“I attended many lectures here,” said Leliana.  “It was one of the happier times in my life.  While you can encounter foolish people wherever you travel, many professors here are brilliant minds devoted to the acquisition and preservation of knowledge.”

“Good to know,” said Shepard.  “I got to finish my degree at a school a lot like this while I was in the Alliance.  I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have.” 

“Oh?  I did not know you were a scholar too,” said Cullen.  

“I wasn’t much of one,” Shepard laughed.  “I did just enough work to keep my grades at a respectable level.  I was too focused on getting my commission and back to active service.  I didn’t really start reading for the pleasure of learning until I’d been an officer for several years.”

“Ah, that much at least my mother managed to impart in me and my sisters,” said Cullen.  “There were few enough books available that I was always fighting over them with my family.  Histories, philosophy, novels- I read whatever was available.”

Shepard smiled at him, and he ducked his head to rub the back of his neck.  She knew that the best officers were thinkers, learners.  She was glad he and Leliana had come with her for this project.  Josephine was certainly capable of running the Inquisition from Skyhold for a few weeks.

Madame Vivienne and several of the highest-level administrators were awaiting their party just outside of the largest building.  A thin, balding man in the most ornately decorated robes approached her and bowed deeply at the waist. 

“Your reverence, I am Chancellor Jurgen Haulis…” he began.

“You can just call me Inquisitor,” Shepard said, catching the man’s hand and shaking it.  

“I- oh!  Of course.  We have only been getting faint reports here.  The University is rather isolated from the political storms outside. By design.  Not that we do not welcome your visit!  No, I myself have been pouring over your work on, ‘The three-body problem and the equations of dynamics’-“

“I can’t take credit for that one,” said Shepard, cutting off his nervous ramble.  “That was Monsieur Poincare.  But I hope it comes in handy.”

“Yes!  Yes, absolutely.  I have already considered a number of applications to celestial dynamics…” his eyes were bright like a bird’s, and the words tumbled out carelessly while his fellow administrators alternately leaned in, trying to eavesdrop, and twisted in embarrassed discomfort.

Shepard clapped him on the shoulder, causing him to stagger a bit.  “We’ll get there too.  Digestible chunks.  But I’m looking forward to our correspondence.”

“You do me too much honor! Yes, I have already written-“

“After the lecture,” Shepard reminded him.  “Are the professors ready?”

The chancellor ducked his head, slightly embarrassed.  “The hall is full, and ready, Inquisitor.  But I’m afraid that many of the works we’ve received from you were very….difficult.  And some- well, many- of our professors are concerned about the levels of Chantry and political opposition to your Inquisition.  Our noble students have been likewise dissuaded from attending. You may see many of our sponsored students in attendance, instead.   Also dwarves.  For some reason, many, many dwarves.” 

Shepard lifted her eyebrows. She had spent many precious and scarce hours letting her omni-tool read translated works aloud for Inquisition scribes to capture and copy, but she hadn’t even disseminated anything historical or philosophical.  She wasn’t aiming to be controversial.  She’d put thought into what went outside the Inquisition.  Mathematics and physics treatises first of all.  You had to have a foundation.  Gross anatomy texts.  Basics of mechanical engineering.  She was casting a wide net, fishing for the minds she would need to build an industrial society.  But she supposed that by sending out a book that said that babies were made by cell mitosis, not the Maker, she was necessarily making a political statement regardless of whether she’d intended to. 

At her gesture, the chancellor led her into the lecture hall through the doors at its lowest level. It was an impressive room- wooden benches rose in at least fifty layers to the furthest wall, and stained glass windows depicting the history of Orlais cast multicolored puddles of light throughout the room.  Per Shepard’s advance instruction, rolls of white silk fabric hung straight down the windowless wall behind her. 

The left side of the room, closer to the windows, was a collection of human and elven scholars of various ages.  Humans in front, elves in the back, except for Solas, who had a seat in the front row on the aisle.  His bland expression concealed what Shepard imagined was contentment at the obvious seething of his noble neighbor in the next seat to his left. He had a leather-bound notebook, quill, and ink at the ready. 

The right side of the room was dwarves.  Shepard had never seen so many in one place.  Well, they all looked alert and eager to learn, which was the reason she was there. 

Vivienne gave the opening remarks.  There was rather more invocation of Andraste’s favor than Shepard would have wanted in a technical lecture, but the dwarves humored her and the humans and elves all made the appropriate genuflections.  At last she explained that in an exercise of her divine wisdom, Shepard was prepared to explain some of the Inquisition’s infrastructure projects and allow the assembled scholars to participate, if they wished.  Translation- they were being recruited.

Shepard stepped forward and fired up her omni-tool.  Pointing at the silk hangings, she projected three images- a steam locomotive, a light bulb, and a line of telephone poles connected with wire.    

“You’re all here because you’re interested in the science texts I’ve sent out.  If you’re the scholars I think you are, you’ve got a lot of ideas on where to go with that.  And I’m sure most of the technology I’m familiar with will develop organically once people start thinking about the application of the scientific principles in those textbooks. But for right now, I’ve identified three projects for the Inquisition over the next year:  transportation, electric circuits, and communications. 

She used her omni-tool to delve into the guts of each of the three harbingers of the industrial age and played a bit of text on the uses and production of each.  She was happy to see that everyone assembled was taking furious notes. 19th century technology was not Shepard’s forte, and it would have been easier for her to explain a mass effect engine than anything steam powered. She’d taken some pains to assemble historical clips using terminology that would translate to the progress of Orlais. 

She asked for questions, but the students were mostly too shy to speak up.   The dwarves stared at her steadily.  Both sides of the auditorium resisted all her attempts to engage the crowd.  Somewhat discouraged, Shepard closed by inviting anyone interested in working on the “3 by ‘43” plan to come to Skyhold and join the Inquisition, or work from the University under stipend. 

The audience remained seated when Shepard dismissed them, and began to talk amongst themselves. One dwarven woman from the front row stoppered her inkbottle and approached Shepard.

She was pretty and middle-aged, with honey-colored braids caught under a velvet caul, and a dark blue gown embroidered with gold thread in geometric designs which strained over her considerable cleavage.

“Bianca Davri of the Merchant’s Guild,” she introduced herself, shaking Shepard’s hand with calloused fingers.  “I’m so glad Varric told me about this lecture.”

“Oh!” Shepard said. “You’re the one who invented Varric’s crossbow.” 

Bianca lifted a delicate eyebrow.  “He told you that?”

“Did he have to?” Shepard said, cocking her head.

“Apparently not. You’re brighter than the humans he usually runs around with, I suppose,” Bianca purred.  “Anyway, I wanted to tell you that you’re going about this all wrong.” 

“I’m sorry?” Shepard said, crossing her arms and looking down at the woman she hadn’t even been introduced to. 

“You’re blasting down the wrong shaft with this lot,” she said.  “Scholars are fine for pure math, I guess, but if you want your machines made, you need to work with the Merchants Guild.  With me.”

“How do you figure that?” said Shepard.

“Nobles don’t want to dirty their hands with commerce.  The lower class students studying here are just interested in the theory.  They’ll take what you have to offer, sure, but they won’t do anything with it.  I can offer you access to thousands of workshops, supply routes, paying customers. You can’t just tell everyone to start shipping their goods with your steam trains- you want them to want to do it on their own.  And I know who will want to.”

“Looks like there’s no need to print the Wealth of Nations,” Shepard said, smiling at her.  “But I’m old and cynical, and a bit distrustful of people who walk up to me and offer to do me favors.  What’s the catch?”

Bianca didn’t even blush. “I want first refusal on all the schematics that come off your wrist, there.  And a ten-year patent on anything I can mass-produce and sell.  In return, I’ll make you anything the Inquisition wants for a year, at cost.  I’ve got the contacts to do it in Orlais, the Free Marches, and Nevarra, wherever you want.” 

Shepard laughed at her. “You made a crossbow and you’re positive you can make me an international rail freight system?” 

“I’ve got a coal-fired steam thresher back at my workshop, if you want to see it,” Bianca insisted. “Look, if I can’t do it, you haven’t lost anything.  The only thing that’s been stopping me so far is a lack of money and raw materials, and it looks like the Inquisition is flush with both.  The people behind me have contacts with all the working castes down in Orzammar.  They’re making decorative armor for noble idiots right now, and they could be making flying machines.  This could change everything for the dwarves.” 

Change everything for you, Shepard thought.  Well, she could work with self-interest.  Varric’s recommendation was a strong one, as far as Shepard was concerned. 

“Five year patent, and you come back with us to Skyhold to work directly for me.  You don’t sell weapons outside of the Inquisition,” Shepard countered.

Bianca gave her a sunny smile.  “I thought that was a given.  You’ve got a deal, Inquisitor.”  They shook on it, and at a preemptory flick of Bianca’s fingers, the other dwarves stood and silently filed out behind her. 

Leliana leaned over to whisper in Shepard’s ear.  “Not that I am criticizing you, but you do know that you just invited Varric’s ex-girlfriend to accompany us- an us that includes Marian Hawke- back to Skyhold and stay there?”

Shepard shrugged.  “I’m sure everyone can be an adult about it.”

 * * *

A naked Hawke tackled him to the ground as soon as Varric opened the door to their chamber in the White Spire.  This was not an unusual form of greeting, and Varric would have been happy to proceed apace with what he mentally considered a ‘Hawke hello.’

But it wasn’t typical for Hawke to reject all gestures at the usual preliminaries in an effort to yank his pants off as quickly as possible. 

He was gently disentangling her fingers from the laces on his trousers when she blurted out, “put a baby in me.” 

Varric shot into a seated position in an effort to stem the choking fit that set off.  Was that his immortal soul struggling to escape from his body? 

Not deterred by a little thing like his imminent demise, Hawke had to be wrestled off of the catches on his trousers.  Not that there was much to fight over.  Hawke’s command had taken the iron right out of his anvil, so to speak.

He managed to get her arms pinned to the floor, which usually would have helped her goal more than his, but her twitching lower lip told him that she might be more vulnerable than usual to talking. 

“Sweetheart, that’s a bit of a tall order in the first place,” he said carefully, “and I’m a bit…surprised that you’re taking a sudden interest in babies.  Since, you know, you didn’t even want to hold Aveline’s.” 

“It was loud and smelly,” Hawke said defensively.

“Babies often are, I’m told,” Varric said, more calmly than he felt.  “What would you even do with a kid, anyway?”

Hawke blinked in surprise. “Well, whatever my parents did with me, I suppose.  I think they turned me over to the dogs after a year or two.”

Varric winced.  “The traditional Fereldan upbringing, then.  I guess your parents had twins right after you, they’ve got some excuse.”

Hawke’s face brightened. “Oh, that’s right!  Twins do run in the family.  Do you think it could be twins?  I would get so gloriously fat, wouldn’t I?”

Varric coughed weakly. “Couldn’t you just eat more dessert, if that’s the goal?” 

Hawke laughed.  “Well, puddings just go to my ass, don't they? No, no, that won’t do.  I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if we looked a bit more like a family?  Couple of red-headed urchins running about, me with another in the oven?” 

The thing about Hawke was that she was capable of taking a perfectly reasonable tone while squatting next to him on the floor, naked as the day she was born, spouting complete nonsense.  Hawke couldn’t even remember to feed herself, or her dog, without Rabbit reminding her. He’d seen Rabbit bring her sandwiches in his mouth- and seen her eat them. 

Varric pulled her carefully into his lap.  It was cold on the floor, and his ass didn’t have nearly enough padding for this, but he sensed he was walking through a field of snares.  He slowly tilted her head against his chest, and winced when she wound his chest hair around her little finger. 

“You don’t think we look like a family, stardust?  Is it that we don’t have Bartrand wheeled out for holidays?  Or Carver?  Or enough dogs?  It’s that we don’t have enough dogs, isn’t it.  I know Fereldans typically have at least one per family member.”

“Well, some people might not think we look like a family,” Hawke muttered. 

Ah.  So they were going to talk about this. 

Varric resisted the urge to groan and lie back on the floor.  He had signed up for this, after all.  And this was Hawke being positively chatty about her feelings. 

“Hawke,” he told her. “You already won.  We’re married.  I wrote a book about you.  I lied to a Seeker for you.  Most importantly, I love you.”  

Hawke sniffed.  “You named your crossbow for her.”

Varric sighed.  “She named my crossbow for her.”

Hawke looked at him insistently.  “Still.” 

Varric ruffled her hair. “You want me to name something after you?  Body part? No?  How about this.  I’ll take your name.”

Hawke perked up.  “Really?  Which one?”

He snorted.  “Whichever.  But Varric Hawke sounds a bit better, don’t you think.”  

She leaned over and kissed him gently.  She was a good kisser, when she took the time.  This time she did, delicately and thoroughly.  Then she bounded to her feet.

“I’m going to go tell the Inquisitor,” she said brightly.  She opened the door to go.

“Hawke!” Varric yelled, alarmed.  She turned back and looked down at him with confusion. 

“Pants,” he said, and hurled the pile of clothing at her.    

Chapter Text

An irony that they would put her in a mage’s cell.  The paint on the walls was white, fresh, antiseptic.  Impersonal. It was the best thing to stare at in the room.  The heavy wooden furniture was gouged, stained. The pits and scratches in the door told stories, and Cassandra had too many stories in her head already.

She couldn’t sleep at night, her pulse pounding too loudly in her ears to let her rest.  So she slept during the day, waking after hours only to feel fatigue pull her back down like a weighted blanket trapping every limb.

The Tranquil surgeon had warned her that the welts around her wrists where Shepard had bound them might scar.  Shepard had only tied her for a day.  Now Cassandra tied herself, ripping the sheets to shreds and twisting them into ropes to hold her hands tight to her chest while she slept.  Cassandra didn’t trust herself unbound, and the pain in her hands anchored her.  Her hands hadn’t bled when Anthony died.  Her hands hadn’t bled when the Conclave exploded.  The weeping blisters were a clue that she wasn’t there.  Like the flat white gloss of the wall.  Clues to lead her mind back from the certainty that she was eleven years old again, watching her brother’s blood float gently off the ground in delicate wisps of light.  Helpless.  

The healers had cleared her. First the Tranquil surgeon, then an array of spirit healers summoned by Madame Vivienne.  There was nothing wrong with her, they said.

They’d missed it. They couldn’t see the weakness inside her, growing and gnawing at her insides like a cancer.  She was flawed, broken, useless.

Cassandra looked at the wall, and twisted the ropes around her wrist.

Someone knocked on her door. Cassandra ignored it.  The healers didn’t knock, and she didn’t want to see anyone else.  The Inquisition was better off without her.   A less polite knock.  Cassandra pulled her arms over her ears and gritted her teeth. 

Cassandra heard the door swing open and crash into the other wall.  A second later, it slammed shut again.

Whoever it was said nothing, apparently seating him or herself in the chamber’s sole chair.

Cassandra resolved to continue to ignore her unwelcome visitor, who made small noises of settling and clothes rustling. 

A wet, echoing belch echoed through the room.  Cassandra finally spun over in her bed, abruptly furious.  Had she given so little that she had not even earned her privacy?

“Hawke?” she asked incredulously. 

The Fereldan woman was lounging insouciantly while drinking directly from a very large bottle of some kind of carbonated beverage.  Hawke held up one finger and swallowed another several ounces of the liquid. She pulled off it with a loud pop of her lips and belched again.

She saw Cassandra watching her and offered the bottle.

“Pass,” said Cassandra, shifting to her back.  The ceiling was also flat and white, but had little bits of paint chipping away in the corners that revealed that the room had once been painted a soft yellow. 

“It’s very good,” said Hawke.  “The Inquisitor taught me how to carbonate things.  I tried brandy first, and that was a poor idea.  This is bergamot lemonade.  It was a better choice.”   

“What are you even doing here,” Cassandra sighed. 

Hawke took another slug of her demon beverage, choked a bit, and slammed a fist into her sternum. 

“Ugh.  Apparently we have a lot in common.  Most of the people I’ve ever known are dead too.  Shall we bond about it?” Hawke said in a monotone.

“Pass,” said Cassandra, lips curling.

“Oh that’s fine too,” said Hawke.  “I’ll just stay in here for a while, shall I, and then I’ll open the door, say ‘good talk,’ and then I’ll go.”

Cassandra wordlessly yelled her frustration with the woman, perhaps a bit harder than she intended.

“Well, you sound healthy enough.  Why don’t you come out of the little mage prison cell and join us while we storm the Grey Warden castle?” said Hawke.

Hawke pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them, watching Cassandra expectantly. 

“There’s nothing I can do for the Inquisitor,” Cassandra said.  “Whatever she has planned, I have no doubt she can accomplish it without me.”

Hawke slurped more of her drink, belched.  “Prob’ly true.  But Varric tells me you’re pretty handy with a sword, and the Inquisition already got you a set of armor with the big hairy eyeball on it, so why not?” 

Her head was throbbing. Cassandra pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes.  She remembered that she still had the sheets still wadded around her wrists, and felt a burning flush of shame go through her belly.  She would have thought she was immune to it after the trip to Val Royeaux.

She shook her head, willing Hawke away. 

The Maker showed her no such mercy.

“It’s not like you’re the first bint to shit their trousers and get carried back to base across someone else’s horse, you know. Varric says the Inquisitor went tits out on her first big mission to the Templars, right?  And wow, let me tell you about some of the gutters Varric rolled me out of-“

Cassandra remained silent. Her throat was tight and hot.  She hadn’t cried since she was a child.  Even then, she’d rarely wept.  Not when the parents she barely knew were killed.  Not when she left her comfortable home for her uncle’s corpse-strewn mausoleum of a residence.  She’d cried for Anthony, and never again.  

“Am I even on the right track?” Hawke rambled on.  “Ugh, talking is the worst.  Should I come over there?  Hug it out.” 

Hawke made an alarming lunge towards her, stirring Cassandra to bat her away violently. 

“For the love of Andraste! Will you just leave me be?” Cassandra begged.

“Well no,” said Hawke. “Haven’t you been listening?  Saar qamek is probably the worst thing the Qunari have ever come up with, and they came up with hoisting me in the air suspended by some of my favorite internal organs because my ex-girlfriend stole a book. I saw one blighter on saar qamek start eating his own fingers while I was in Kirkwall.  I can’t just leave you here hoping you don’t get nibbly.” 

Cassandra rolled back over and sat up.  The world was a bit swimmy. She had been sending back her trays. 

“You wish to talk, Hawke? Fine, let us talk.  I am in no danger from the Qunari poison.  It showed me horrors, yes, but I have seen terrible things before.   No, what it showed me is that I am useless.  The Inquisitor does not need me.  She has her own task, and it is beyond my comprehension.  I have failed my family, Justinia, and the Seekers. And I have nothing to offer the Inquisitor.  What am I now, a cut-rate bodyguard?  I have failed at everything I set my life to doing.  What can I offer the Inquisition’s cause?”

“If you ask me-“

“I’m not,” said Cassandra.

“Causes are nothing but trouble.  Every git I’ve known who became a mass murderer thought he was doing it for the right cause.  Forget it! You’re fit, you’re got all your teeth, and the Inquisitor likes you. Everyone likes you!  Even Varric likes you, and you tied him up and threatened to kill him.”

Cassandra choked back an unwilling laugh. 

“What, really?” 

“Of course he does, Cassandra.  He wouldn’t bother razzing you otherwise.  He’d just have you killed in your sleep.  By me, probably.”  Hawke gave her an exaggerated, leering wink. 

“Don’t worry so much about what you can do for the Inquisition,” she continued.  “Do you want to go or not?  It seems better than hurting yourself in a prison cell, but everybody tells me I have no taste.” 

 Cassandra groaned, and tried to run her hands through her rat’s-nest hair.  They got stuck. 

“Are you saying I should just tag along the Inquisitor’s side without any regard to whether I deserve to be there?” she demanded of Hawke. 

Hawke giggled. “Haven’t you noticed?  That’s what everyone is doing!  Maker’s tits, Cassandra, you’re no better than anyone else. You’re a lonely, shiftless piece of meat, just like the rest of us.” 

“I can’t believe they sent you in to talk to me,” Cassandra told her. 

“Possibly I was looking for Sera’s room.  Varric said her scar looked like Rabbit’s face, and I wanted to see.” 

Cassandra started trying to work the snarls in her hair out with her fingers.  “That’s just perfect, isn’t it,” she said, defeated by Hawke’s persistence.

“So my mother said to my father when I was born.  Alas, they kept trying,” she said.  She extended her hand to Cassandra, who grasped it and pulled herself to her feet. 

“That’s a girl,” Hawke said reassuringly.  “Let’s go dunk you in barrel or something, and then I’ll show you my knives.  That’s not a euphemism, not to worry.  I’m a married lady, after all.  But then maybe you should go get laid.  That always makes me feel like an Alamarri.” 

Cassandra made a disgusted noise, and followed her out of the room.

Chapter Text

“Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances,” Shepard murmured to herself. 

“Pardon, what was that?” Cullen asked absentmindedly.

“Nothing,” said Shepard. Sunzi was no longer fashionable, no longer taught to captive audiences of midshipmen at the Alliance academy. The tactical advice was out of date in an era of orbital bombardment and mechanized warfare, and the strategic thinking had been displaced by turian military philosophers in the curriculum of young officer candidates.  Know thy enemy was the thought, and the training was always tailored to the last war. Shepard had read the Art of War out of her mother’s library as a lark when she was thirteen, and as a more serious study after Torfan.  Now that military technology had returned to a level not inscrutable to that of Master Sun, perhaps she should have the military classic printed and distributed. Cullen would like it, she thought.

He was looking better here. Whether it was the rich Orlesian cuisine, the socialization, or the familiar surroundings (he’d moved without asking into the former Knight-Commander’s quarters), Cullen looked more rested and alert at their temporary White Spire base.   

The table before them held a scale model of Adamant Fortress and the surrounding terrain, developed over the last week at Shepard’s command by Harding and Leliana.  By the giggles emanating from their ersatz War Room at the top of the tower, Shepard judged that the task had not been an onerous one. There were little tufts of lichen glued to the ground to represent trees, and even tiny bits of carrot carved in the shapes of local wildlife dotting the cliffs over the fortress. 

Cullen’s plans were sound and reasonable, but Shepard remained glued to the model, searching for another alternative.  Cullen proposed a frontal assault using a combination of cannon, catapults, and siege towers.  They had sufficient forces.   The Wardens had demons and veteran soldiers, but their numbers were dwarfed by those available to the Inquisition.  It would end in a slaughter, after a number of losses on the Inquisition side.  

If the extermination of the Wardens were a permissible outcome, she might as well just encircle the fortress and wait until Varric’s smith could manufacture a rocket capable of carrying a large enough payload to destroy Adamant entirely. Barring any mishaps in the manufacturing process, the Inquisition wouldn’t lose a single soldier.

But Warden Stroud insisted that the bulk of the Wardens were innocent dupes, and that their commander could see reason if separated from the Tevinter blood mage.  Less convincingly, he insisted that the Wardens, and Adamant Fortress itself, were needed in the event of another Blight.  Solas had indicated his doubts about that.   The Wardens were certainly not doing anything to protect civilians against darkspawn at the present.  Still, it was better not to waste the lives of either her troops or relative innocents if she didn’t have to.  Can always kill them later, hard to do the reverse. 

“I’m open to ideas, people,” she told the crowd assembled behind her in the War Room. She was accustomed to murder-boarding her tactical plans when she wasn’t simply presented with them by someone with a better brain for it than she had.  She got it done, of course, but in review, she was well aware that most of her successes bore more debt to her steady gun arm and disregard for her personal well-being (not to mention that of her troops) than any real personal brilliance at the planning stage. 

There was a decided lack of military talent backing her up here to countermand her- as deadly as they might be individually, most of her team were tangentially involved with large scale warfare at best. Solas was being characteristically closed-mouthed on the subject.  (She suspected he would have approved the carpet-bombing of Adamant Fortress).  

She considered gas attacks- she could have knocked out the Wardens, and probably done so with a lower mortality rate than the conventional assault, but there was no telling what the effect would be on the demons already summoned and bound. 

No, there was no substitute for a physical assault on the fortress.  She would have gone in with a shuttle in her time.  The lack of air support was the hardest change for her tactical mind to get over.  It took the three dimensional tactics she’d learned in warfare school down to two. Like a chessboard.  She was terrible at chess.

Why had she even bothered with a model of the terrain?  She eyed the cliffs behind the fortress.  Unless…

“Yes, it might work,” said a quiet voice next to her.  “A dark gentle thing on the wind.  You don’t want to hurt them.   You just want them to understand.” 

“Who was that?” Shepard asked, turning to find the space next to her empty.  She thought she recognized the voice, but there was no one there.  “Did anyone see anything?” 

“Pardon?” asked Cullen again from across the table.  “I didn’t hear anything.”  He was beginning to look a bit concerned.  They’d been at this for a while without making any headway.  

“Never mind,” said Shepard, leaning again into the model.  “Is this distance and elevation to scale?” 

“Yes, Inquisitor,” said Harding.  “Those cliffs are where I was taking my readings from.  I spent three days under a tarp in the desert getting that right.” 

“So there’s a way to get up there without detection,” Shepard mused. 

“Well, for a few people, anyway,” she responded.  “You couldn’t move a big group in.” 

Shepard was certain she’d had dumber ideas than this before.  Boarding the geth dreadnaught.  Working for Cerberus.  Punching Khalisah al-Jilaani (that last had felt so good, though, it was hard to regret). It was so insane the Wardens would never see it coming.

She turned to survey her assembled teammates. 

“So, who’s not afraid of heights?”

* * *

The heat of the day was still baked into the rocks two hours past sunset.  It wasn’t going to create much of a thermal, but with a good 100 meters in the vertical over the ramparts of Adamant, and only 225 meters on the lateral, they didn’t need much lift.  The glide ratio of the paragliders would have been sufficient even with dead air around them. 

“In 1630, Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi soared across the Bosphorus.  That was more than three kilometers.  We’ve only got to make it point two five,” she told her team. 

Not that she had to rally a large number of troops.  The only people insane enough to come with her were Cassandra, still smarting from her recent fall, Solas, who was apparently down for anything, and Hawke, which went without saying.  Had there been one more?  Why had Bianca made five paragliders?  She couldn’t remember. 

Sera had come along solely in a last ditch effort to talk them out of it, and to signal Cullen if necessary. 

“I don’t know what any of those words mean, and this is still stupid,” said Sera.  “You should let Cullen march up to the fortress and knock it over, alright?  Not too late for just knocking things down like a normal person would do.” 

“Perhaps the next Inquisitor will have more sense after Shepard dashes her brains out against the walls of Adamant,” said Solas.  

“If we only had a spare, I would quit,” Shepard told him.  He’d been a brick throughout training, and done everything she’d asked to prepare, but his opinion of the mission remained unchanged.  “Nobody is dying tonight.  We practiced.  We did longer flights than this in training.”

“Nobody is dying except for that greasy little Tevinter shit,” Hawke corrected.  “When we take out Erimond, Corypheus loses control over the demons.”  Hawke’s enthusiasm for the venture was buoying Shepard at this moment.  Hawke had taken to the air like her namesake and had to be coaxed out of harness at the end of the day. 

The only person who’d spent more time in the air than Hawke was Cassandra.  Her first flight had made her go grey and vomit down the front of her jumpsuit.  But the woman had calmly stripped to her underclothes, requested a change, and suited right back up.  She grimly practiced until she could adequately control the paraglider.   Then she practiced more.

After a week of that, Shepard had tried to corner her and tell her she had nothing to prove.  Cassandra said she was fine.  Fine.  Who was Shepard to argue with fine.  Shepard had been fine for years. 

Shepard ran through the pre-launch safety checks twice, for good measure.  She had packed all the midnight-blue silk sails herself so that nobody else could claim the fault if this mission went awry.

“Solas first.  Then Cassandra.  Then Hawke.  Then me,” she reiterated.  “Fire team one liquidates Erimond.  Fire team two secures Clarel.” 

“Cole has already launched,” Solas corrected her.  “He will be the most capable at evading detection and securing our landing pad.”

“Who?” asked Shepard, baffled.  She didn’t know anyone named Cole. 

Solas simply shook his head, amused. 

It was already forgotten. 

“Hey Solas,” said Sera. “What did the ancient elves say about flying?”

Solas gave her an unexpected grin.  

“The world may never know,” he told her.  Then he bent over at the waist, adjusted his lines, and started his sprint toward the cliff edge. 

The sails inflated well before he reached the jump, but Shepard’s heart still caught in her throat as his feet left the earth.  Sera bit the side of her hand anxiously.  Shepard still wouldn’t call the two of them friends, exactly, but Sera had softened towards Shepard’s Fade expert since her injury and convalescence.  

“Inquisitor,” said Cassandra, with a stiff nod, before she took off after Solas.  That little knot of hurt hadn’t healed nearly so well as Sera, but Shepard wasn’t sure what to do about it. She didn’t have a Kelly Chambers to talk through it with, and the mysteries of the human psyche were a no-man’s-land to Shepard. 

Hawke followed Cassandra, with a muffled war whoop.  Shepard hoped nobody was shooting at her by the time she landed.  If she landed.  Now that she was strapped in, she couldn’t approach the edge to see if any of her team had made the landing.  She shouldn’t be able to see them anyway; everyone was in dappled shades of grey and midnight blue, and they were aiming for a wide parapet without torchlight.

Shepard accepted Sera’s farewell fist-bump, and braced herself for the sprint.  She heard the sail snap full of wind, and felt the lines catch against her padded harness.  She gave a brief prayer to all attentive deities of the air, and launched. 

It didn’t feel like falling. It was too dark to see the ground below her, and she had to fix her eyes on the landing pad.  Stroud told them that the spot to aim for had been used in ancient times for some kind of winged riding beast.  Although the gravity on this planet might have allowed for the evolution of such creatures, the idea still sounded ridiculous to Shepard.  She was happy for the large landing target, however. 

No arrows were shooting past her as Shepard adjusted her lines for the descent.  She couldn’t see any activity on the other walls, either. It was refreshing (yet disappointingly unfamiliar) for a mission to be starting off exactly as planned.  Shepard felt wind against her face as she jerked a bit too hard on her brake lines and landed heavily, falling to her knees. The chute deflated over her, rather than behind her. 

Hawke was apparently out of her gear already, and rescued her from the yards of silk she’d gotten tangled in.

“Nobody seems to have detected us yet,” Hawke said in a stage whisper.  “Fire team one’s already hunting down the shitweasel in the tower.” 

Rather than fold her equipment back up, Shepard wadded it in a corner.  She’d either be leaving through the front entrance or in a sack. 

Hawke hadn’t been able to bring her bladed staff on the flight, and was armed with a pair of serrated and curved daggers instead.  Shepard wasn’t sure how adept the other woman was with them, but from what she’d heard, Hawke didn’t actually need a weapon to be deadly. 

They set off together through the fortress, with Shepard doing her best to keep the patrol pattern in her head as they went.  Solas had scouted the fortress “in the Fade,” and Stroud had given up everything he knew of his fellow Wardens’ guard habits.  According to Cullen, they weren’t very good.  “Darkspawn don’t sneak,” Stroud had explained.  Still, the locations of Erimond and Clarel were mostly guesswork.  The best thing they could do was keep their eyes and ears open, and walk softly. Shepard still wasn’t over wishing for her sidearm.  Perhaps a suppressed pistol in this precise instance, rather than a shotgun.  Bianca was looking into it, but had made no promises as yet.  Parasail technology was a lot easier to replicate than firearms.  Shepard expected she’d hear of a number of Orlesian nobles going aloft in the near future. 

There was one near miss when a sleepy Warden had come around a corner just as Shepard was descending a set of stairs, but Hawke managed to pull her into a shadow before the man could discern two figures out of uniform, and he passed them by.  This corridor, as best anyone could guess, held the Warden officers’ quarters.  There were three doors.  No nameplates.

Without anything else to go on, Shepard simply palmed her own dagger in her right hand and prepared to burst into the first door by turning the handle with her left hand. 

Hawke seized her by the back of her shirt just before Shepard could open it.  The other woman held up one finger, then tapped it to her nose. 

“Brimstone,” she mouthed, then pointed at the door.  A demon, then.  A Warden already bound by Erimond.  If that was Clarel, they were too late to save the Wardens anyway, so it was best to try the other doors first.  Shepard nodded. 

They moved quickly to the next door.  Hawke took a deep sniff, then nodded.  She pressed her back to the wall next to the door while Hawke pressed her ear to the door. She couldn’t hear anything within. Hawke gave her another nod then pointed at the door. 

As quickly and quietly as she could, Shepard turned the knob and opened the door.

It was dark within, with only a single candle left in a sheltered lantern hanging over the queen-sized bed in the center of the room.  An elderly woman with a shorn, grey head was lying in the middle, apparently asleep.  Clarel, by Stroud’s description.

Shepard felt a stab of pity for the woman as she looked down at her sleeping figure.  The emotion was quickly exorcised as the woman’s eyes flicked open, and her arm jerked up to hurl a blast of fire directly at Shepard. It nearly seared through her barrier, and Shepard had to bite her tongue to keep from yelling as she felt her eyebrows singe.  

But just as quickly as Clarel had moved, Shepard was able to sweep her into a stasis field, and Hawke fell in behind her and kicked the door shut, trapping all three in the room.

Although she hadn’t exerted herself since launch, now a good half an hour past, Shepard’s pulse was racing and she was breathing hard as the adrenaline coursed through her body.  She would have injected a mild sedative, if she’d had her armor.  Her body couldn’t sustain this level of anxiety for much longer before her endorphins would crash, leaving her sluggish.  

“We are not here to kill Wardens,” Shepard said to Clarel.  “We just want to talk to you.  We haven’t hurt anyone,” she added quickly.

“Yet,” added Hawke, cheerfully. 

Shepard cut her a brief glare, then focused on Clarel again.  The woman was trapped in her own bed, limbs splayed out, clad in her nightgown, but her gaze was as cool and assessing as any general on the battlefield. Shepard threw another stasis field over her arms, just in case. 

“I’m going to loosen the stasis effect over your head,” she warned Clarel.  “But if you yell, we’ll have no choice but to kill you and carve our way out of here.  We came here because we’d prefer to negotiate a non-violent solution, but you should know that leveling this fortress with everyone inside it was Plan B.  Blink twice if you agree to try talking it out first.” 

She began to weaken the stasis field from the top of Clarel’s head down.  The woman looked at her and slowly blinked twice. 

Shepard freed Clarel’s head. She rolled her neck back and forth to test the limits of her freedom, then looked at Hawke and asked, “who?”

“Well, that’s new,” said Hawke.  “Usually, my reputation precludes me.” 

“Precedes,” Clarel said. 

“I know what I said.  Anyway, Marian Hawke, Champion of Kirkwall.  This is Evelyn Trevelyan.  Inquisitor.” 

“Why are you here?” Clarel whispered.  The stasis field must have prevented her from fully expanding her chest.  Nothing to be done for it, Shepard thought.  She didn’t have that kind of control. 

“So,” said Hawke, sauntering into the room and taking a seat at the foot of Clarel’s bed, “a few years back, I dictated a very long and detailed letter to the First Warden over in Weisshaupt.  I would have trusted Carver to do it, but I’m not entirely sure mother ever got around to teaching him to read.  Anyway, it was all about how I broke into a Warden prison in the Vimmarks and loosed an ancient evil, blah blah, not my fault, and had to kill a bunch of crazy Wardens who’d fallen under the aforementioned ancient evil’s false Calling.  Remember that?”

Clarel slowly shook her head from side to side. 

“You lot didn’t get the letter, or you don’t understand?” asked Hawke. 

This was taking longer than Shepard had wanted.

“Why are you here?” Clarel asked again. 

“Well, imagine my surprise when I found out that after I had explicitly told the Wardens that Corypheus had used a false Calling to control Wardens and make them believe that they needed to use blood magic to stop future Blights, the lot of you were trying to stop future Blights by using blood magic because you’re hearing a false Calling.  Really, I just had to come and ask you if you were all as stupid as my dear baby brother.  Who is not that stupid, by the way, because he’s safe up in Antiva while you’re summoning demons and practicing human sacrifice!” 

Hawke was beginning to get a bit exercised.  

Clarel closed her eyes and was still shaking her head. 

“Why…believe you,” she gritted out. 

“Didn’t you hear me?” Hawke asked incredulously.  “My father helped the Wardens seal Corypheus’ prison.  My brother’s a Warden. I’m here with Senior Warden Stroud.  I should practically be an honorary Warden by association.”

“We have heard about you, Champion,” said Clarel.  “Your association with the Wardens has not always been to their benefit.” 

“If you’re talking about Anders, you should know he was like that when I got him,” Hawke said.

“What, dead?” said Clarel, with a curl of her upper lip.

“No, taint-addled crazy,” said Hawke, voice suddenly silky with threat.  “And as you and your friends are currently straddling the very thin line between the two, perhaps you might stop provoking me for a moment and listen.” 

“We don’t have much more time,” Shepard told them, breaking into the conversation.  “We didn’t have to come here.  We didn’t have to try to make you see reason.  We’re here because Hawke says Thedas needs you, and Corypheus is close to destroying the Grey Warden order for good.”  

“How do you know that Corypheus is behind Erimond’s plan?” Clarel asked, after a moment of contemplation.

“Hello, have you met him?” Hawke asked, working herself up.  “You think there’s a rash of Tevinter blood mages trying to convince the Wardens to march down to the Deep Roads to die en masse?” 

What effect Hawke’s logic had was unknown, because the floor suddenly shook with an echoing roar. 

“What was that?” Shepard asked, rushing to the slitted window.  Shouts were beginning to echo from around the fortress. 

“Dragon?” said Hawke, looking more excited than concerned.

“Archdemon!” Clarel yelled, eyes going wide with terror.  “You must let me free!”

Shepard released the stasis field, hands coming up protectively in front of her. 

Moving much more quickly than her age would suggest, Clarel grabbed the staff resting against a bedside table and rushed into the corridor.  

“Follow me if you truly wish to help!” she cried, racing down the hall. 

Another muffled explosion shook the room. 

“Think that was Fire Team One?” Hawke asked as they ran after Clarel. 

“I’ve never seen Solas blow anything up yet!” Shepard yelled back.  

The Wardens were swarming the ramparts like a kicked-over anthill.  Here and there, demons had turned on their handlers and were attacking knots of Wardens, who were not doing a fantastic job at fighting back.  Shit.   Shepard had expected the Wardens to at least have plans in place to control the creatures they had summoned in the event of slips in control. Apparently not. 

Shepard could see Clarel, easily visible in her long white nightgown, running for the top of the battlements.  From the corner of her eye, she saw Solas and Cassandra sprint from the opposite side of courtyard.  Both looked uninjured, to Shepard’s great relief.  

She waved them after her as she sprinted up the stairs for Clarel’s position.

She heard a roar from above and saw the great red dragon from Haven pass overhead.  It belched forth a dazzling stream of fire and energy, taking out a group of archers on one of the towers. 

“How the fuck do we kill that thing?” she yelled at Hawke.  Hadn’t Hawke killed a dragon? 

“Burn it with fire?” Hawke said.  “That’s an archdemon, not a normal dragon!  That’s a Warden problem!” 

The top of the tower was kitted out with four different arbalests, pointing out in the four cardinal directions.  A number of Wardens had followed up the stairs behind them, as well as Fire Team One. 

Clarel was already manning one, tracking the dragon.  At her command, the others quickly assembled on the other machines.  The dragon swooped to burn another tower, then pumped its way aloft again.   

“Wardens!  Wait until it is within range.  This is what we have trained our entire lives for!”  Clarel called, relinquishing her arbalest to a senior Warden.  She used her staff to shoot a wave of golden sparks into the air, signaling the beast. It banked and turned for their tower. 

Shepard clutched her dagger and felt useless.  Her biotics wouldn’t affect it at range even if it weren’t coursing with red lyrium. What she wouldn’t give for a heavy weapon.  Should she go down and try to sort out the demon problem instead?

One of the arbalests fired a long steel harpoon trailing a thick silk line.  The Wardens were much better at aiming at dragons on the wing than Shepard was, because it sunk into the dragon’s hindquarters directly above its left leg.  The rope unspooled quickly and snapped tight.  The dragon roared. 

It banked back towards the tower to gain slack on the rope, but from the trajectory of its flight, Shepard knew it was about to begin pumping its way back aloft. 

“Hold the line!” Clarel screamed, and without thinking, Shepard scrambled forward to seize ahold of the slack in the rope, pulling with all of her strength as the line burned her palms.  She felt someone’s arms come around her waist and pull her back as the arbalest began to creak and crack under the strain.  She saw Hawke and Solas jump for the base of the line just in time for the entire structure to give way. 

For the second time that night, Shepard was aloft.  The great beast bellowed and struggled to gain lift with Shepard dangling from the line still embedded in its leg.  Shepard looked down as the ground fell further and further away from her. Someone was still holding her waist, hands clasped together with white knuckles.  Cassandra.  Shit.   Solas and Hawke were clinging to the wreckage of the bow several feet under Shepard. 

“Hang on tight!” she yelled, and began to struggle to pull herself up, hand over hand. 

The dragon knew they were there.  It was climbing for altitude, hoping to shake them loose. 

Shepard’s lungs began to burn.  Surely the creature could not fly above an altitude where Shepard could not breathe. Could birds fly higher than the dead zone atop Mount Everest on Earth?  Had she heard that?  Who knew what oxygen requirements a red lyrium dragon (archdemon?) had.  Possibly it didn't breathe.  She had to reach the top.

Slowly, painfully, Shepard pulled herself and Cassandra up the line.  Her triceps were burning.  She still had at least three hundred feet to go.  There was no way she was going to reach the dragon while they were still gaining altitude. 

The creature turned its head and looked directly at Shepard, red eyes shining despite the lack of moonlight. Then it snapped its wings wide into a slide so that it could bend itself nearly in two and bring its head far enough back around to scissor its jaws through the harpoon piercing its body. 

And this is how I go, was Shepard’s first thought as the five of them tumbled inelegantly down through the air.  Close to a mile up.  Enough time for my life to pass completely before my eyes.

But then she remembered the last time she had died.  And the last time she was reborn.  And she snapped open a rift before she could hit the ground. 

Chapter Text

“If this is the Maker’s bosom, I spent too much time trying to be good,” Hawke said. 

Shepard’s senses all failed her at the moment she toppled through the rift, though she didn’t believe she’d lost consciousness.  Instead, it was as though her senses were rebooting and coming back online one by one. Hard restart.  Sight last. 

The sky was a bilious green, with a hazy, diffuse light source that didn’t quite devolve into a sun or moon hanging thirty degrees over the horizon.  The surroundings seemed mutable; Shepard thought there was a large bird statue to her left, but when she looked directly at it, it seemed to be nothing but a rock outcropping. 

Hawke had scampered up to the top of the nearest pile of rocks and was already scanning their environment.  Solas and Cassandra were still picking themselves up off the ground.  Shepard didn’t recognize the fifth person standing between them; he looked like a young man (perhaps a young man who had been dead in the water for a few hours).  He was wearing the same blue and grey camouflage tactical gear as the rest of her team along with a ridiculous hat.  

“Who are you?” Shepard demanded. 

He turned to look at her with milky blue eyes wide with fear. 

“I’m here to help- but not here!  Not like this!” he blurted. 

“You can see him now?” Solas asked Shepard.  “Fascinating. You are having such a remarkable effect on the Fade- and the Fade on you.”  

“That’s your friend the demon,” Hawke called down to them.  “His name is Cole.  You keep forgetting him.” 

“You can see me here,” Cole breathed.  “You are the strongest thing, sharp, clear where everything is dim.  It tries to change you to fit, but you are changing it first.” 

Solas approached her and tentatively ran his hands down her arms.  Shepard looked down and saw that her cammies had somehow been exchanged for her N7 armor.  Startled, Shepard patted it down.  It felt real and solid under her touch.  There were even the scratches down the left gauntlet where Jack’s pet had tried to gnaw her arm off. 

“I haven’t seen this in…” Solas began.  He shook his head.  “You have nothing like the Fade in the world you came from?”

“I once took a trip through the geth consciousness,” Shepard said slowly.  “This feels a little similar.” 

Solas cocked his head at her.

“Could you change your form by force of will there?  Try it here,” he urged her. 

Shepard looked down at her left hand again.  She tried to imagine her N7 arm plates replaced by Rosenkov Materials telemetry mods. As she stared at it, it swam in her vision and slowly blurred into a new solid form.  Rosenkov.  Shepard experimentally tossed a singularity away from her team.  Then another.  God, it worked.  She stretched her arms, feeling the familiar resistance of the armor membranes.  It felt so good. 

Shepard smiled at Solas (his eyes were bright with emotion) and gave a little bounce on her heels.  

“It’s going to be ok,” she announced.  

Cassandra straightened a little at that. 

“Now try the area around us,” Solas urged.  “Do you remember the last place we met in the Fade?  The ice world?  Try to bring that to where we are.”

Shepard closed her eyes and pictured Alchera.  The Normandy. The ice and snow, the rock ledges. The emptiness of the place. Holding it tightly in her mind, she opened her eyes.

There was a bit of ice extending across a circle of about three feet around Shepard.  It started to melt as she looked at it. 

“Well,” said Hawke. “So much for that.” 

“Not at all,” Solas responded.  “That was her first try!  Without any preparation, without calling upon any amount of magic, or the aid of any spirits- that was extraordinary-“

“And I can’t wait to see what the place looks like once you’ve put in all the repairs, but shouldn’t we worry first about-“

“How are we going to leave this place?” Cassandra interrupted Hawke.  “Can we simply leave through a rift the way we came?”

Shepard looked around. She couldn’t see anything that she recognized, but the ground was gradually sloping up towards a distant mountain (tower?).  Even further away, partially obscured by some floating boulders, was a distant shining city. 

“I can open another rift, I think,” said Shepard uncertainly.  “But I don’t know where it will go.  I didn’t know where we’d go when I opened the last one.”

“Seems like if we just opened it right here, we’d still be up in the air over the Abyssal Rift,” Hawke pointed out.  “Let’s not exchange our current problems for the old ones.”  

“Can we just walk a bit up the hill and try there?” Shepard asked Solas.  “Would that put us back in the cliffs over Adamant?”

He shook his head. “There is no direct correspondence between distance in the Fade and distance in the waking world.  The two are connected by the logic of the heart, not the mind.  We must walk until we locate either a landmark we recognize, or another rift.”  

“No,” said Cole.  “The Nightmare controls this place.  He is oldest, strongest.  He pulls the threads to the middle of his web, so that his Fade never changes to another place.  He fears her, even though he is fearing itself.” 

Shepard looked at him (it?) skeptically.  “Translation?” she asked Solas.

He frowned.  “I believe Cole is saying that this patch of the Fade is controlled by a powerful fear demon.  It won’t let us leave.”

“Oh,” said Shepard, relieved.  “Well, we’ll go terminate it and then we’ll move out.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Hawke said, jumping down from her rock. 

Their little group set off uphill by default, since the spire was the only feature which did not seem to have been carved by random chance.

From time to time they were approached by wisps of light or weak demons of one species or another. One rock was the same as another, and the ground changed variously from puddle to dirt to stone.  As they got closer to the spire, however, artifacts began to dot the scenery.  A pitted door frame.  A broken mirror.  A saddle girth, sliced by the belly strap. 

One piece of broken furniture caught Shepard’s eye, and she diverted her team to approach it.  It was a simple desk, but the material did not seem natural.  The desk was overturned and caught partway into the stone, as though the stone had grown up around it.  Shepard ran her fingers over the handles in the file drawers- plastic.  She could swear it was plastic.  She looked at Cassandra for confirmation.

“Have you ever seen anything that looks like this?”

Cassandra approached and opened the drawer experimentally. 

“A desk, but made of something. . . no, Inquisitor, I have not seen the like,” she said.  “but I believe there is something inside, here.” 

She pulled out a datapad. Shepard laughed to see the incongruous object in the middle of the swampy desolation around them. 

“Did I make this?” she asked, amused.  “I used to have a dozen of these scattered around my cabin.”

Everyone crowded around her to look at it.  Shepard thumbed the power switch and turned it on.  A cascade of familiar letters and symbols appeared on the screen.

“Well, what does it say?” Hawke prodded her. 

“Sorry,” Shepard said, startled.  “I forget nobody else reads English.  Though I’m not sure that’s what this is, entirely…UT can get it.  It’s mostly English, with a few untranslatable words.”

______________

23/4/2836  

Dear Gillian-

The new pollinators have been released, and are working.  Turns out they’d just been engineered to like the local chow a bit too much, and they were spurring those [untranslatable] flowers towards the south of the southern continent to ever wilder profusion instead of the Terran transplants.  Fixed it. 

My next project is fine-tuning the large carnivores.  I’m worried they’re not doing their job, and all your pretty little vegetables will get gobbled up by the new ruminants before they can disperse. 

God, it really is everything our parents must have hoped for when they joined the Initiative.  A chance to really collect on the promises of a human future in [untranslatable].  A human world for humans.

Speaking of my father, have you spoken to him since he’s been back from the surface?  Some of his reports on the biological effects of the trace eezo in the atmosphere were hard to follow, and I wondered if your mother had said anything about how he’s doing. 

I’d ask him myself, but….you know. 

Melissa sends her love.  The next little one is due in August.  Think you’ll dock with us before then?

-Oliver

_______

Shepard read it aloud so she could translate it for the benefit of her friends.

“Is this real?” she asked Solas.  He took the datapad from her, stared at it as though he’d be able to read it without her assistance.

“It was someone’s reality. Someone believed they sent this. Or received it.  Someone here,” he told her. 

“It’s dated six hundred fifty years after I…after my time,” Shepard explained to her team.  “About ten thousand years ago, if I’m right. Sounds like it was the first human on this world, or one of them.  He’s talking about terraforming.” 

“I can’t follow where his hurt came from,” Cole said.  “It reaches back further than I can go.  His hurt came from somewhere else.” 

“He sounds like Cerberus, Skipper,” said a familiar voice behind Shepard.   She whirled to see a woman in Sirta Foundation Phoenix armor climb over the rise and salute.  

Shepard’s heart caught in her throat.  She nearly dropped the datapad from stiff fingers.  She had thought the time in her life when she might be happily surprised by unexpected reunions in strange places was over. 

“Ash…?” she said, haltingly. 

“A spirit of the dead?” Cassandra asked, putting a cautionary hand on Shepard’s arm. 

“Be on your guard,” Hawke warned them.  “Old friends in the Fade are rarely helpful spirits.” 

“It wanted to stop the Nightmare too,” said Cole.  “It thought it might be the only one who would try.  It liked that you wanted to try too.” 

“A spirit of valor,” said Solas. “Attracted to Shepard.”

“However you want to play it,” said Valor, in Ashley’s voice.  She(it?) reached behind her back and pulled out an Elkoss Combine shotgun. Before Shepard could even flinch, she tossed it to her.  Shepard caught it nimbly in the air.  Entry level. But still better than she’d had before. She nodded her thanks to the spirit and holstered it on the catch in her armor.  

Shepard paused.  This wasn’t a comfortable situation, and her training had not extended to navigating conversations with either dead friends or avatars of human emotion.

“Do you…remember Ashley’s life?” she asked hesitantly. 

“I’m here for you,” the spirit said, putting her hands on her hips in an achingly familiar pose. “Nothing else matters right now. Right?”

“Sure,” sighed Shepard. The more she learned about Thedas, the less she understood.

“Do you know about the man who wrote this?” she asked Valor, and pointed at the datapad.

Valor shook her head. “No more than you do,” she said. “But everything around here is tied to fear.  The Nightmare wouldn’t keep it if he hadn’t been afraid when he wrote it.”

“Can I keep it?” she asked Solas, gesturing with the datapad.

He shrugged.  “This is unprecedented.  I would have said that only thoughts and emotions can travel across the Veil, but then here we are.   Of course, the last people before you to cross back in to the waking world physically from the Fade brought the Blight, but I canot say that will happen this time.” 

“I’ll make sure to empty my pockets before we leave, then,” Shepard said.

She waved her newly expanded team onward and upwards.  

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Valor.  It wasn’t quite human.  Its skin was just faintly incandescent in a way no human’s would be.  But it was very close.  Ashley as she would forever live in Shepard’s memory. 

As they climbed, the artifacts grew in number.  Almost all were consistent with the cultures of Thedas, but here and there Shepard saw a hint of her time.  A broken riot shield.  An empty canteen.  A single heat sink.  Why were the hints of their shared future preserved in the Fade, but nowhere in the waking world?

The air felt normal when Shepard breathed it in, but it rendered even nearby objects hazy and indistinct.  She didn’t see the slim, dark figure until she was almost upon him. 

“Oh God,” she said. “I really do not need this right now.”

The spirit wearing Thane’s face nodded gravely and bowed slightly.  “Siha. I would not trouble your heart, were it my choice.  But the pieces you are missing of yourself bear on the pieces missing of this world.  We both have our parts to play in this.” 

“He is here out of duty. But it hurts.  She hurts.  I don’t know how to fix this,” Cole muttered urgently to Solas. 

Shepard folded her arms around herself and bent her head so that she didn’t have to look at him. She’d made peace with Thane’s death. She’d prepared herself from the start, after all.  But this was worse than his memorial.  It wasn’t a mockery, but it wasn’t him.  But he looked so… 

She stepped forward and simply leaned her forehead against Duty’s shoulder.  The leather smelled exactly the same as she remembered.  He tentatively brought his hand up and traced the tips of his fingers through her hair. 

“And that’s awkward. For us.  The rest of us here.  Especially you,” said Hawke, apparently to Solas.  “Shall I see if I can dig our way under some of these rocks, here?”

“I can hear you,” Shepard told her.  She let her breath out in a whoosh.  “Alright. Spirit.  Duty.  What do we need to do?”

He wordlessly gestured behind him.  Partially obscured by an overhang, Shepard could see the shattered remains of laboratory equipment.  

She and the others picked through it, pressing buttons, palming screens.  Cassandra overturned a scanner of some kind and unearthed another datapad.  She wordlessly passed it to Shepard.

 __________

3/7/2852

Dear Gillian-

I strongly feel that the recombinant mutagens should not have gone live without the assent of my team.  However exigent the need to deal with the local psychic manifestations was, it is plainly obvious that my father has gone far beyond the neural adaptations we discussed and is simply doodling with the human genome. 

We cut off communications with the Initiative because we wanted to live by a human consensus and human rules.  But my father seems to have forgotten the consensus part of that decision, and is trying to impose one rule- his.  This cannot continue.

Gillian, we’ve been friends for a long time.  You know my father better than I do.  Please, reason with him.  How does he think this ends?  Do you know everything that’s in the new genetic code, even? 

If I were a more suspicious man, I’d say he’s trying to breed us into some kind of Brave New World caste-based society. It’s one thing for us to go rogue and go it alone.  But if anyone from back home ever figured out we were building some kind of race of super-soldiers capable of mass destruction with their minds- well.  I think the [untranslatable] would revoke our colonization rights pretty quick, don’t you think?   

Melissa and Sean miss you.  Wish you’d visit.  I feel like a lot of these divisions will go away once we join the settlement on the surface.

            -Oliver

___________

Shepard thought that explained quite a lot, actually. Her growing crowd of followers were chewing through that, but Shepard decided that simply moving through the place quickly and decisively was the best way to avoid dealing with any of the squishier facets of human existence.  Like the reincarnation of your dead boyfriend.  Or the origin of your species.  They’d kill the demon and be out of the Fade before they had to think about feelings. 

The artifacts and statues were growing thicker and more complete the nearer they climbed to the top of the spire.  Tiny horrors skittered nearby.  Bits of death.  Fragments of destruction.  Echoes of fear. 

“It was first.  It holds the oldest things here,” Cole said, apropos of nothing.  “Old hurts. Old worries.  It is greedy.  It wants it all.  It wants more, always more.” 

Shepard looked at him askance.  “Anything else you can share, kiddo? It’s just a demon, right?  How many demons have we squished already?  Any reason I can’t just warp it and toss it out of here?” 

Cole looked at her unblinkingly.  “I don’t know.  It is very big.  I’ll try to help.” 

“Good to know,” said Valor. “Bigger they are, harder they fall, right?” 

“We’ll be with you, siha. I promised,” said Duty. 

Onward and upward.

The last plateau short of the summit was littered with debris.  Metal was twisted, burned, piled in fragments taller than she stood. Shattered glass littered the ground. Shepard could barely discern a path through the mess.  It was worse than the destruction she’d seen on Thessia or Earth, if smaller in scale. There was a certain pattern to Reaper destruction; a flattening, an impersonal end, like a comet. This was not that.  This was devastation inflicted at close range. 

“What caused this?” Cassandra whispered.  “I have never seen…”

“He was afraid,” said one more new voice.

There was no slow approach. There was not even a moment for Shepard to brace herself, to harden mental or physical muscles against seeing him again.   She simply turned around, and Kaidan was there, dark brown eyes full of sorrow.

“No,” was all Shepard could say.

“Commander,” he said, and reached for her.  She flinched away. 

Cassandra pulled her sword and thrust Shepard behind her while she tried to catch her breath. 

“Spirit, or demon, I do not care, but this is enough.  Enough! I do not claim to understand what draws you to her, but if your aim is benign, begone. You cannot continue to torture her with faces from her past.  It serves no purpose.”

Hawke peeled her further away from the spirit, and the two women stood shoulder to shoulder between Shepard and the creature wearing Kaidan’s face.  But they couldn’t block his voice. 

“I wish I could,” it said. “But I can’t.  We don’t have much time.  We’re getting closer to the Nightmare, and you still need to understand. You’ll need us.  I was made for this.  I’m here because of you, Shepard.”

“What manner of spirit are you?” Hawke asked.  “I know Duty and Valor, but you feel different.”

It was Solas who answered her.  He hadn’t spoken since they’d found the second message. 

“Sacrifice,” he said quietly. “A spirit of sacrifice.  They don’t- they don’t last.  None have been born since the days of Arlathan.” 

Shepard pressed her palms to her eyes, squinted hard, and tried to regain control over herself. 

“Let’s just figure out what we need to find here to kill the demon and then get out of here,” said Shepard. “With nothing more than we came in here with.”

“It is there,” said Sacrifice, pointing to the ground a short distance away.  Another datapad.

She threw out a cautioning arm to the group as she retrieved it.  She needed some distance. 

Shepard found a seat on a piece of rubble and opened its message.

 ____________

12/31/2868

Dear Gillian-  

I wonder if you shall even receive this message.  If you do, if you are still listening, get out of the city. I have already given the signal to bring down the orbital stations.  We are coming to destroy the groundside installations tonight. 

I told my father that further alterations would mean war.  Did he think we would forgive him? A third of us dead. His own grandchild.  The survivors unrecognizable.  This is as bad as the [untranslatable] ever did. 

And for what?  To fulfill his paranoid fantasies of returning to the Meridian as conquerors?

It’s been forty years!  Nobody is coming!  Nobody remembers us!  Nobody is looking for us!   There is nothing to be gained by going back.  And so I have ensured that we never will. We will forget the past.  We don't need anything we brought with us.  It is all tainted by my father's work.  Nothing is safe.  We will build this new world from the ground up, the way we should have done to begin with.  That's the only way we'll ever know we're safe from the [untranslatable] back at the Initiative.  

I would like to believe you didn’t know.  That you weren’t involved. 

If I should ever learn otherwise, you should fear my vengeance.

-Oliver

____________

Shepard read it aloud to the rest of her team.  The spirits stood together, watching them. 

Cole had his eyes closed, and he rocked slowly on his feet. 

“He couldn’t kill his own father, and his father couldn’t kill him.  Now his father’s still here, but he can’t die.  He can’t die unless you kill him.  It’s the first hurt, the oldest fear.  His fear got bigger and bigger as he got stronger and stronger.  Vengeance couldn’t drive out fear, it only hid it.”

Solas’ jaw was clenched so tight Shepard could see the white strain of his muscles.  She needed to get out of her own head, she thought.  She had other people to worry about.  She touched his arm. 

“Hey,” she said softly. “We can think about it later.  Or never.  It was ten thousand years ago.” 

He blinked, swallowed. 

“Of course, Shepard,” he said, after a brief hesitation.  “Later.”

“Later,” she agreed.

Chapter Text

“I don’t like pet birds. They have beady little eyes, and scratchy little lizard feet, and I’m afraid they will peck me.  I’m afraid that that the pinky toenail that turned black and fell off last month will never grow back, and I’ll have nine toenails for the rest of my life.  I’m afraid that I left half a meat pie in my satchel under Varric’s bed, and he’s going to find it when it goes off.   I’m afraid…”

Hawke was feeding her fears to Nightmare.  It had gone quiet since she had begun her monologue of tiny fears, but Shepard thought that was less due to Hawke’s litany and more because after it had laid bare their biggest fears for everyone to hear, what else was there for it to say? 

The top of the mountain turned out to be a desolate plateau nearly a mile across, with bits of Adamant Fortress stuck directly in the middle.

Shepard knew a trap when she saw one.  She pulled her team into cover just below the summit only for the Nightmare to begin taunting each of them in turn.  It was a minor mercy that it addressed them each in their native tongue, and taunted Shepard last.

Commander Shepard.  Or should I call you Inquisitor?  Do you serve a new cause now?  It’s a shame what happened to your old one.  Did you think you won?  You could never have defeated them.  Our race was so small, so foolish, so unprepared.  And they were so big.  Oh, the shape of your fear is so delicious.  Such a delightful change from the fears of this world.  Men’s hands, long winters, sickness in the water. Bland and unsatisfying. Thank you for bringing these fears to Andromeda, Shepard! I could never have thought of them on my own. 

Solas was quietly raging, his hands curled into tight fists, the skin stretched taunt over his knuckles. He seemed oblivious to everything around him.  Shepard wanted to yell at him to get out of his own head for once and help her think of something, but she hadn’t the first idea what they were going to do. 

There was nothing between them and the bits of the fortress.  In the gaps in the walls, Shepard could see something moving, and its size discouraged her from charging in.

“If anyone wants to share the wisdom of the spirit world, now is the time to do that,” she said, looking pointedly down the row at the three spirits. 

“We’ve only been here for a day, what do you think we know?” Valor asked her, eyebrows up in surprise. 

“One day?” Cassandra asked, confused.  “I thought spirits were the Maker’s first children.  Older than us.”

“Perhaps some are older than you.  We are here because of Shepard,” Duty told her. 

Solas closed his eyes and leaned his head against his closed fist. 

“Did anyone bring an M-920 Cain?  Heavy weapons?  Anything?” Shepard asked.

Sacrifice leaned forward to look at her.  “I could get one for you.  But it won’t be enough unless you think it is.  And you don’t.”  

Shepard sighed. 

“Ok, guys, unless anyone else can think of something better, it looks like it’s forward into the fortress. We’ll just have to hope the Nightmare is vulnerable to small arms fire and pointy things.” 

Her party wordlessly picked themselves up and trailed after Shepard as she started walking across the desolate plateau.  It was coarse sand, featureless and blank.  The shining city seemed very near on the horizon. 

Adamant Fortress was recognizable chiefly from the iron griffin statutes.  Large sections of the walls were simply missing.  Crenellated battlements simply left off from one foot to the next.  If the Fade was a reflection of human thought, were there pieces missing simply because nobody had ever thought about those sections of a wall? 

Whatever the Nightmare was, it was missing too.  Shepard had anticipated some kind of giant spider.  Almost everyone was afraid of spiders, and Thedas already had some doozies. But when Shepard led her team in, all with weapons in hand, barriers at the ready- it was empty.

“There!” said Hawke, pointing to the top of a tower.  “The arbalests!  That’s where we were when the dragon picked us up!” 

Solas perked up at that. “If you open a rift there, Shepard, it should take us back into the waking world in the same place.” 

Shepard turned in a circle. 

“It’s never that easy,” she muttered.  Where had the Nightmare gone?  Where was the trap?

She turned fully in another circle.  She saw nothing.  Her group was starting to relax grips on weapons, look at her in confusion.

She caught the eye of Sacrifice.  Slowly, ever so slowly, he tilted his head back, exposing the long, muscular column of his throat.  Hair pricking down her spine, Shepard looked directly overhead.

It was still very high up, to look so small.  It was dropping slowly, slowly through the air, taking its time to savor the fear that filled Shepard’s throat to choking. 

Even from this far away, Shepard could see its single red eye.  Could hear the clarion call.  Had heard that sound in her nightmares since Eden Prime. 

“Reaper,” she said.

She looked at her doom for perhaps ten more heartbeats before she moved.  

Lifting her arm, she tore open a rift at the top of the arbalest tower.

Cole already knew what she wanted them to do, and he grabbed Hawke’s arm, started pulling her towards the stairs.

Solas followed her line of sight from the Reaper to the new rift.  Then he looked at her. 

“No,” he said.  “No, you cannot ask this of me.”  He made a short, definitive movement with his hands. 

Shepard tried to smile at him. 

“I’ll be fine,” she lied. “Killing Reapers was my job.” 

“No!” he said, as if a louder tone of voice could convince her.  “That thing used to be an elf.  The creator of my people.  You cannot possibly know how to defeat it.  I will-“

Solas was working himself up into a fury, gesticulating violently.  Valor edged around the group to stand behind him. 

Shepard knew how this went. 

She caught Valor’s eye, gave her a small nod.  Solas was going to be so pissed at her, even if she somehow lived.

Valor caught Solas just behind the left ear with a firm tap of the butt of her assault rifle.  Hawke caught him under the arm when his knees buckled.  

“Oof.  He’s more muscular than he looks, isn’t he?  Maker’s balls, you must be good at sex if this is how you keep a man,” Hawke told Shepard. 

“Oh, I’m supposed to keep them?” Shepard muttered weakly. Cassandra dipped her shoulder to pick up Solas’ limp form in a fireman’s carry. 

“Inquisitor?” Cassandra asked uncertainly.  “Why can’t you come with us?”

“I brought this thing here,” she told her, gesturing at the group to leave her and run for the stairs.  “I can’t leave it here and risk it infecting the rest of the Fade.”

Cassandra nodded, face unhappy, and followed Cole and Hawke up the stairs.  Shepard turned to take the three new spirits into her fire team and lead the Reaper away from the rift.  At the last second, she turned and yelled at Cassandra,

“Tell them I meant to come back!” 

“I’ll tell him,” Hawke called down, waving to her. 

Shepard led the three spirits away from the fortress at a jog.  She could make out the shapes of the Reaper’s arms, now. 

Distantly, Shepard could see Hawke’s figure when it stepped through the rift.  There was a flash of green light.  Shepard held out her hand, and a lance of energy from the Mark closed the rift behind her team.  The Reaper wouldn’t be getting into the waking world via that exit at least.

The Reaper’s call blasted again.  It was getting closer.  The first blast of its beam scored the ground, far away from her.  It was going to toy with her before it killed her. 

“Any ideas at all?” Shepard yelled.  “I am open to suggestions!”

“You have everything you need,” Valor called back.  “You always do.  We’re here for you.” 

Shepard kept running toward the edge of the plateau until she didn’t hear the footsteps of the spirits behind her.  Gripping her gun, she whirled to look for them, fearing the worst. 

The Reaper had touched the ground, crouching over Adamant Fortress like a massive spider.  Its eye searched for her. 

The three spirits had changed.  They no longer wore the faces of her dead friends.  Now she looked at three versions of her own face.  Three different Shepards. 

The first Shepard was young. Colossus Armor, scar across her face. There was hope in her eyes.  She had a new council, a new ambassador.  She thought they would listen to her.  

The second Shepard was older, harder.  The Lazarus Project took the scar, left her with a red gleam in her stare.  She clutched a Claymore shotgun.  She had destroyed a mass relay, turned herself in for it.  She still thought in terms of right and wrong.

The last Shepard was wearing tattered fatigues and carried a single pistol with six rounds left. Everyone she loved, everyone who’d ever loved her was dead.  Anderson’s blood stained her sleeve.  Asked the air, what do you need me to do?

“You know how to stop it,” the last Shepard told her softly.

How?  How had she ever stopped the Reapers?  The entire Fifth Fleet?  The Quarian navy?  The Crucible? Her outdated shotgun was the most technologically advanced item in the Fade.  How could one small creature defeat the most lethal machine ever devised…. 

Kalros. 

Shepard stared down at her hands. 

“Can I change my form?” she asked the spirits.  “Into something that…big?”

The smile was uniform. A gentle benediction, split in three like a dressing room mirror.

“No,” they said in unison. “We’re here because of you.  We're always with you.  We’re here for you.”

Their forms began to blaze white, bending higher and closer until Shepard had to shut her eyes against the brightness.  The three forms stretched into one, then stretched taller. 

When she opened them again, she saw the giant thresher maw rear nearly 90 meters into the air.

Shepard wasn’t going to stay still and hope it knew she was its mother.  She scrambled to the edge of the plateau and hopped over the ledge. 

She’d heard this fight before.  She knew how it ended.  She ran from the sounds both meaty and metallic.

She was nearly halfway down the mountain when the burst of green light caught up with her like a tsunami, sweeping away reality and carrying her with it.

Chapter Text

Solas rarely drank. Alcohol disturbed his sleep and inhibited his connection to the Fade.  More importantly, he was rarely offered anything worth drinking.  Room temperature Fereldan ale, rotgut brewed in questionable conditions in alienage bathtubs, Dalish whiskey carried in halla-leather sacks- all a firm ‘no thank you.’  He never overindulged.  He could barely remember the last time he’d gotten well and truly drunk- likely some weeks-long revel hosted by Sylaise to celebrate a good harvest.  Or one of Anaris’ orgiastic bonfire parties, deep in the forest, in the dark of winter.  A younger time, a younger elf. 

He couldn’t recall a hangover that had ever left him as ill as he currently felt.

Someone was poking him in the ribs.  He did not appreciate being poked in the ribs when waves of nausea were gripping his abdomen and his head felt as though his brains were attempting to escape through the back of his skull.

He rolled to his side and was sick in the general direction of the person poking him.

There was a quick shuffle of feet and some muttered cursing. 

Solas experimentally tried cracking his eyes open, but the stabbing pains in his head only intensified with the admission of visual stimuli.

“See?  He’s alive.  Let’s just leave him alone with whatever shreds of dignity the man has left,” said a lilting Fereldan voice.  Hawke, he thought.

“Nuh uh,” said someone else in a deep Marcher tone.   “The Inquisitor gets back, and she finds out you let her favorite elf choke on his own vomit, she’s probably leveling this place with us still in it.  Healer said wake him up, we wake him up.”

Solas’ stomach heaved again, but his stomach was so empty that all he could do was spit a bit of bile on the floor.  Drawing on reserves of resolve deep within him, he opened his eyes.  Some squalid stone room, no doubt filthy even before he’d vomited on the floor.

He tried to ask a question, but only got as far as, “What.”  His voice was so weak that the two bystanders did not seem to hear him. 

“I don’t see how any of this could be called my fault,” Hawke said indignantly.  She saw that Solas had opened his eyes.  “Oh, hi. Look, I’d come over there and hold your hair, but…”

He couldn’t quite focus on her face.  His vision kept swimming in and out of focus. 

Varric entered his line of sight. 

“How are you feeling there, Chuckles?” he asked.  His voice had a touching note of sincerity to it.  “Hawke thought you might have a concussion, maybe a cracked skull.”

He didn’t say. 

“Healer,” Solas managed to croak out.

“Mmmm, I don’t actually recommend it,” Hawke said.  “The healer is this moldy old Warden missing several parts.  Of himself.  Obviously, not a true professional. 

“You can hardly fault the man for being unable to re-grow an eye,” Varric protested.  

“I can do what I want,” Hawke said firmly. 

“Healer,” Solas said again, with more feeling.  He looked insistently at Hawke, until the face he was making exhausted him.  

“I just told you…” she began.

“I think he means you, stardust,” Varric said.

“Oh come on.  I’m no kind of healer,” Hawke insisted.  “I kill things!  Smite them with the force of the Fade, explode them from the inside out…”

“Hawke, everyone knows you lived with the best healer in the Free Marches for three years.  You might have picked up a few things from him? Besides lice?” Varric suggested. 

Hawke looked a bit flustered, and tempted to dissemble.  Solas gathered his strength and reached out a hand toward her. 

His initial thought was to gather enough Fade energy to strike her to her knees, but his pitiful gesture apparently had the desired effect without any application of force.

“Oh fine,” she groused, stepping around the mess on the floor and roughly taking his head in her hands. “Don’t tell anyone about this.”

Waves of red light danced behind his eyelids, and the pounding in his skull grew harder and more insistent before abruptly vanishing. 

Hawke tried brushing something that looked like blood off her fingers, then gave up and wiped it on her shirt.

If Hawke knew what was in his blood, she wouldn’t be wasting it like that.

Did she know? Had he been indiscreet enough in his reactions in the Fade to disclose his connection to…what could he even think of them as now?  The colonists?  Not the Creators, not ever, not even the Evanuris now. 

How he’d prided himself in seeing outside the system they’d build around themselves, in finding the flaws in the self-contained logic.  He was like a child who thought he was clever for escaping his cradle, yet never realized that he was still confined to the nursery. 

How many people had lied to him?  For years, ages?  His entire existence?  ‘Oliver,’ certainly.  Which meant Mythal, too. The rest of his ‘family,’ likely.  Wisdom?  His mind shrank from the thought, then drew on the banked fires of his anger and revulsion at every crime he’d seen committed against his people (who were his people even, were they all his people). 

He thought he was sustained by frustrated pride, by the gaping abyss between what his people were and what they could have been, could still be if just given the opportunity. Should it be grief, instead?  At how far they had fallen, by their self-immolation?  One false god, who threw them down from the skies, a second false god, who stole the heavens away?  

Whatever sins Elgar’nan had committed, they paled next his.  Not in casting up the Veil.  In becoming so weak, so useless that he turned over his focus to Corypheus, and set in motion a chain of events that nearly destroyed the world- and the one person who had a chance of saving it.  

He shut down his familiar litany of self-loathing.  Varric and Hawke were still staring at him. 

Schooling his face into something resembling calm, he asked, “Where is Shepard?”

 * * * 

It was a bit like floating in space.  Shepard wasn’t sure what a mind defined by gravity and three dimensions would have made of it.  Swimming, maybe.  But there was no surface.  Only the green. 

There was no direction. No  landmarks.  Nothing but her own body to ground her.  She’d died floating in space before.  There had been stars, and fire.  But no air. Her mind pulled from that memory- the last memory of her first life.  For a moment the green separated and formed into specks of light.  Her lungs stuttered.  She didn’t think she could breathe. 

Something seized hold of the power module along the back of her armor.  It towed her gently but firmly, like a hooked fish.  Shepard exhaled her breath in surprise, unsure if she could catch another.  

Nothing changed in her field of vision, but she had the sense of movement, slow at first, then faster. She tried to open her mouth to yell, but whatever medium she was suspended in did not transmit sound.  

Whatever force was pulling her forward abruptly stopped, although the force did not.  

She was caught against something.  She wildly craned her head around, but could see nothing but the green.  The pressure was insistent, getting firmer and firmer by the moment.  She was compressed against something like a bug on windshield.  Just before it became painful, there was a ‘pop’ of sensation, like she’d passed through a membrane.

There was a renewed rush of sensation that churned her stomach and made her head spin as she oriented herself and reaccustomed herself to breathing, smelling, feeling. 

Dirt under her cheek. Smell of growing things. Humus.  Decay. Life.  The smell of her childhood.  She sucked in a deep lungful of it as she pushed herself to her feet.

The sky in this part of the Fade was still green and hazy, but somehow gentler.  The shining city was very far away over the horizon. Around her plants grew and twined in faintly glowing profusion.  Small flowers in gentle shades of pastel, leafy bushes in vibrant orange and green, and overhanging trees in cool jewel tones, all luminescent and pulsing with power. 

“N7 armor, even,” said a cool voice behind her.  “I could have ordered you up on a video queue, couldn’t I?  It’s all a bit deus ex machina.  I had almost grown accustomed to the role myself.  Perhaps I’m jealous.” 

Shepard turned to see an elderly human woman clad in the synthetic leather coveralls common to farmers across the galaxy. Two galaxies, apparently. Her silver hair was pulled back from her face by a pair of welding goggles.  Shepard’s gaze snagged on her eyes.  They were as golden as an owl’s, or a wolf’s, brilliant and canny in her otherwise unremarkable face. 

“A Spectre, even.  I remember the day you were invested.  I was just a little girl then, but the teacher stopped class and put you on the vidscreen so we could all watch you walk out of the Presidium.  You were wearing that armor then.  It must have been quite a day,” she continued. 

“Are you another spirit?” Shepard asked, confused.  The woman didn’t glow like Valor had, but nothing in the Fade had made much sense to her yet, and she wasn’t sure there was such a thing as rules. 

The woman laughed. “Perhaps? It is hard to say, these days. I think we’ll have to invent another new word for what I am.  Just as they have for you, Inquisitor.” 

Shepard narrowed her eyes, considered the woman more closely.  She could have been any of billions of human colonists spread across the galaxy from her memory.  Mindoir. Eden Prime.  Horizon.  But she wasn’t, was she?  She was sure she would have remembered the eyes. 

“Gillian?” Shepard said tentatively.

“Oh, very good, a very good guess!” said the woman.  “This is her garden, after all.  I stop by, from time to time.  Sometimes a very long time to time.  Pull weeds. Encourage certain blooms.  But no.  Poor Gillian.  I’d almost forgotten that was her name.  I often do not recall my own.”

Shepard regarded her for another moment.  “Melissa, then.” 

The woman favored her with a predatory golden-eyed smile.  “Ah, I haven’t heard that name spoken for thousands of years and dozens of lives.  You may be the only person alive left to speak it.  I was always fond of it.  My older sister named me.  She died in a shuttle crash on Yandoa when I was two.  But it hardly sounds heroic, now, does it?  Nobody could imagine little Melissa Cook fighting off the dragons when they came calling in the night.  My husband gave me a new one.  He was always very good at naming things.” 

Shepard dusted her hands off on the armor. 

“This world is so weird,” she confided. 

Melissa smiled.  “I’ve always quite agreed.  I’ve done my best to make it look more like home, but“ -she looked around in gentle dismay- “like this garden, it sometimes gets away from me.”

She bent and plucked a small reddish-brown flower from the bush at her feet, and handed it to Shepard.  Shepard accepted it, then swore as the tiny thorns on the stem stuck her thumb. 

“Careful of the thorns,” said Melissa, belatedly.  “Sacrifice is rarely attractive, and never gentle.” 

Shepard examined the flower more carefully.  It looked like a plant, but when she closed her eyes, pushed her mind out at it-

“Another spirit of sacrifice?” she asked, confused. 

“Oh, not quite,” said Melissa.  “The start of one, perhaps.  This little bush hadn’t bloomed in thousands of years.  That was the first round of changes Ephraim made.  We got down to the surface, and the spirits were erupting around us night and day.  Quarreled with a neighbor, Rage broke down your fences.  Flirted with a colleague, Desire knocked at your door that night. We lost a lot of people.  We brought our demons with us, you see.”

“But you changed,” Shepard said.

“Just a bit.  We all agreed on that one.  We traded away our power over the Fade.  Nothing you’d even notice, off of Thedas.  We couldn’t have demons rampaging in our footsteps.  But then Ephraim started walking the Fade in his dreams.  He wanted to draw upon the power stored here.  Not for everyone.  Just the people he trusted.”

Melissa sighed, swept a piece of her hair back from her face.  “We make the same mistakes over and over again, it seems.” 

“How are you still here?” Shepard asked her.  “Are you like the Nightmare?  Was that…Ephraim?”

Melissa laughed.  “A matter of perspective, I suppose.  No need to worry that I’ll gobble you up, at least.” 

Shepard eyed her more suspiciously.  “I’m not sure those were answers to any of my questions.”  

“Because you don’t have the right questions,” Melissa snapped back.  “You might question what might happen when your virtues no longer overwhelm your vices.  You might question what will happen to a large stretch of the Fade no longer occupied by the Nightmare.  You might question what, exactly, you think will happen if you succeed in contacting whatever remains of the Andromeda Initiative, and bring in people a bit less heroic than yourself.”

Shepard leaned forward. “I assume you have some thoughts on that?”

Melissa smirked at her. “I gave you the questions.  And now you want answers too?  Awfully greedy for a guest in my garden.  Well.  Seems it’s time you were off.  I’m sure someone is missing you.” 

Shepard looked around herself pointedly.  “I don’t know where I am.”

Melissa gave a cackling laugh.  “Exactly! If you knew where you were, that’s where you’d be.  The gate is over there.”  She pointed out of the garden.  “I suggest you start walking.  You certainly won’t find where you’re going if you stay where you are.” 

Chapter Text

“We cannot leave Adamant without the Inquisitor,” Cullen insisted.  “We’ll be telling all of Thedas on the march back that she’s gone. Every noble between here and Skyhold will withdraw their support.”

“You give her too little credit,” Cassandra insisted.  “She chose to send us back without her. She trusted us to continue the work of the Inquisition until she returns.  We betray that trust if we simply discontinue the missions in progress to await her orders. We are not children, who must be specified every little task.”

Cullen threw up his hands. “Do you think you understand how to pick up her work, then?  Because I do not.  I thought that was the entire reason we had an Inquisitor in the first place.”

Cassandra snarled at him. “I am not suggesting I take her place. Only that we should not panic and wring our hands when we cannot ask her what to do for a single day!”

The air was hot and close in the small chamber at the top of Adamant’s only undamaged tower.  Solas understood the fear animating both Cullen and Cassandra, shared it even.  Shepard had charted a course for the Inquisition that even he struggled to understand, after all.  But he knew from experience that the Inquisition forces could not be left idle, encamped around Adamant.  Many had seen the dragon carry the Inquisitor up into the air, and they had not seen her return.  If not given work to do, speculation would erode morale in the ranks.  

Hawke had led him to this meeting, but neither of them had spoken yet.  Hawke had her arms folded below her breasts, and looked bored. Cullen occasionally cast her a wary look, but did not object to her presence.  It was Cassandra who ultimately drew her in. 

“Hawke, you were there too. What do you think the Inquisitor would want us to do?” she asked. 

Hawke snorted indelicately. “I’m not sure the Inquisitor was thinking much other than, ‘Enemy.  Kill.’”

Cullen sighed.  “And have you searched the Fade in this area? Are you certain there is no trace of her?  I could send for sufficient lyrium to return you…”

Hawke grimaced.  “No thank you.  There’s nothing here.  In all seriousness- nothing.  I had to go most of the way to the Western Approach to find anything that looked like, well, anything in the Fade.” 

She rubbed the back of her neck and cast a sidelong glance at Cullen. 

“I also, ah, asked some of the ‘neighbors’ if they had seen her“- here she mimed a brief slash across her palm- “and they have not.  The Fade is completely wiped away in this area, and she and the Nightmare are gone.” 

Cullen’s nostrils flared. “Oh that’s just perfect, isn’t it. I knew it.  I knew it!  I can’t believe you would use blood magic to find her, after everything we saw here…”

“Not the point right now, Cullen,” Cassandra said.  “You knew what Hawke was like when we agreed to make her Inquisitor, long before the Conclave.  If Shepard hadn’t fallen out of that rift, Hawke might very well be leading the Inquisition forces.”

“Horrible idea,” Hawke muttered.  

“I quite agree,” Cullen gritted out.

“Enough!” said Cassandra. “Hawke, if you have any input on what we should do, we would be privileged to hear it.”

Hawke sighed, and walked to the map table in the center of the room.  She looked down at it and braced both hands. 

“I think ‘what would Shepard do?’ is still the correct inquiry.  ‘What would Hawke do’ usually starts with drinks and nudity and somehow ends with the city on fire.  You know what, let’s just follow Shepard’s decision-making process.  Let’s ask her elf.”

Solas had simply been content to lurk in the background of the meeting and observe.  He was startled when the other three turned to look at him expectantly.  It always surprised him when these humans turned to him for counsel.  He’d been rejected by one elven community after another since waking.  And yet somehow, without hardly trying to infiltrate the Inquisition, he’d found himself at the center of their strategies. 

It was all due to Shepard. It all depended on Shepard.  She’d been on Thedas for less than a week and somehow divined a shared history and common purpose for every race. If she was gone, it would all fall apart as quickly as it had come together. 

“I think you should return to Skyhold.  You have dealt Corypheus a deep blow, taking his demon army away.  He will move quickly on whichever of his plans remain. Moreover, the Qunari threat has not yet been addressed.  Corypheus and the Qunari have the potential to destroy the foundations of Shepard’s new society before it can take root.”

Cassandra nodded. “And the Inquisitor?” 

She was loose in the Fade, altering the very nature of half of their reality with every footstep. She was an innocent in the woods, ignorant of the consequences of her very existence.  She was his heart, and the best chance he had to salvage his works or have them utterly destroyed. 

Solas turned to leave the room.  “I will find the Inquisitor.”

 * * * 

Shepard was faintly amused by the entire thing when she left the garden with no certain destination.  There had been enough months and miles that she could think of most of her Milky Way friends and acquaintances as fond memories, not painful absences. ‘Yes, Joker, it was absolutely necessary to hang on when the dragon took off.  Letting go would have meant letting it win!  And anyway, I now have the ability to rip holes in reality.  So there was no real danger.  Not even from the thresher maw.  It’s on our side now, remember?  As soon as I find a way to load them in a delivery vehicle, they will reshape modern warfare.  We’ll keep them in the hold, next to the shuttle. Being late for PT will result in hot-racking with the thresher maw.’ 

Her faint smile vanished when she remembered that Cerberus had had the same idea.  Akuze.  A grim reminder that any weapon was only ever as righteous as the last hand to hold it.

This part of the Fade was much more attractive than Nightmare’s domain. There were trees and plants and the sensation of wind.  She didn’t have the faintest idea where she was, but she wasn’t wounded, nothing was trying to kill her, and she wasn’t aware of anyone in imminent need of her help. By those standards, it was one of the best days she’d had in years. 

She didn’t see any spirits or demons, though playful wisps occasionally appeared and divulged a fragment of information.  The chorus of a song in a language she didn’t speak.  The smell of crushed pine needles.  The brief excitement of a hunt.  Whatever this area of the Fade was, it did not correspond to a great deal of human traffic, she supposed.

She did see the occasional bit of stonework suggesting a ruin of some lost civilization.  While the humans of Shepard’s time owed a great deal to the Prothean Archives in their ascension to the stars, Thedas’ various cultures all seemed so consumed with their lost pasts.  The colonists had willfully destroyed their spaceships. The elves, humans, and dwarves had all lost their great empires.  Even the Qunari seemed to be wrestling with a gap between the promise of their religion and their performance.  Why did Thedas seem to be on a constant downward trajectory, when Shepard’s people had seen nothing but growth?  Europe after the fall of Rome had endured a thousand years of darkness, but that time period was a blip compared to Thedas’ decline. 

Did the Fade make this world fundamentally unsuitable for human life?  Or was it the red lyrium?  The Blight? 

Why had this colony failed?

She was so consumed with her thinking (and Shepard had never been known as a deep thinker) that she failed to notice the wolf until she was almost upon him.  Less than ten feet away. 

Sitting or standing, his head would have reached her shoulder.  He watched her so calmly that she wondered, for a moment, if he might actually be some native breed of dog she had yet to encounter.  Hawke’s war dog was nearly the same size, and many creatures were larger on Thedas than their earthly ancestors.  But the length of his muzzle and strength of his jaw confirmed to her that he was a wolf.  Albino, she supposed, with unblemished snow-white fur and bright red eyes.  Six of them.   He gleamed faintly in the diffuse light of the Fade.

Shepard let her fingers brush Valor’s shotgun and swallowed hard.  It would be a shame to have to kill such a beautiful creature. 

“So, are you a good boy or a bad boy?” she murmured.

The creature gave a low rumble in its throat, and turned his face away as though offended. 

“Or are you a boy at all?” she wondered.  “Are you a spirit?”  The wolf gave a brief wag of his tail, then sat back on his haunches with the tail wrapped around his front feet, catlike. 

Shepard lifted her eyebrows. “Oh, so we’re going to be friends, is that it?”  She hesitantly stuck out her palm.  The wolf slowly rose to his feet and padded softly towards Shepard.  He delicately sniffed her palm, then rubbed a cool, wet nose across it in greeting. 

Shepard gave a shaky laugh. “Well, ok then.   Pleased to make your acquaintance.  I’m Commander Shepard.  I don’t suppose you know where I am, or where I’m going, do you?”  The wolf turned his head to look at the horizon, in a slightly different direction than she’d been headed.

“Oh, you are a good boy, aren’t you,” Shepard murmured.  “Right then, Lassie, please take me back to Skyhold.”  The wolf snorted, then turned and started trotting in the same direction he’d indicated earlier.  He turned back to check that Shepard was following him.  One direction was as likely to lead her back to Skyhold as another, so Shepard followed her new guide, bemused.

There was no sense of time in the Fade.  The not-a-sun light source did not vary its position in the hazy sky.  The air (if that was what it was) never grew too warm or too cool.  They walked, Shepard and the wolf, and sometimes they stopped and looked at things. Statues.  Stone arches.  Waterfalls. Shepard sometimes stroked her fingers through the thick, soft fur at his ruff.  Water sources were frequent, and Shepard drank from them without any ill effect. She supposed that to any human civilization, a source of clean drinking water would be an important concept, and that’s why there were so many of them in the Fade.

Eventually, she grew hungry. When she idly mentioned that to her silent companion, he veered away from the direction he had been leading her, and, sniffing the air, detoured a few minutes walk to some kind of plum tree.

Shepard picked a fruit from the lowest branch (it smelled like fruit should smell) and hesitated before biting into it.

“There’s a very old story from Earth,” she told the wolf.  “About the god of the underworld, and how he trapped the daughter of the goddess of the harvest when she ate fruit from his kingdom.” 

The wolf pricked his ears at her attentively. 

“She ended up forced to split her time between the underworld and the daylight world.  And her mother mourned whenever she was gone.” Shepard looked at the Fade fruit. “Oh well,” she said.  “If the King of Hell wants me, he should know I’m hardly a virgin bride.  I’m lucky to land him, at my age.”  The wolf snorted, whether in agreement or jest, she wasn’t sure.  

Her armor didn’t have pockets, so she gorged herself on the fruit, then licked her fingers clean. The wolf tried to help, and she pushed him away, laughing and threatening to wipe her sticky fingers in his fur.

They continued walking for what Shepard’s dead reckoning called a dozen more miles before fatigue began slowing her steps.

“Can I have a nap?” she asked the wolf.  “Or would that not be advisable here?  It doesn’t look like it’s ever going to be bedtime.”  Again, the wolf detoured until they game to a riverbank where grass was growing thick and soft.  No bugs in the Fade, Shepard was pleased to discover.  The grass made a fairly comfortable bed, even if Shepard was too wary to remove her armor.  She could sleep anywhere, under any conditions, armor on or off.  This was nowhere near the bottom of her ranking of sleeping arrangements. 

She lay down on her side, facing away from the water.  The wolf padded down next to her, lying along her back.  She relaxed her head against his hindquarters.  The fur was nice. 

“You know, wolves generally do not enjoy the best reputation in folklore,” she informed him.  He laid his snout along her calf and blinked all of his eyes at her.  “Not eating me in my sleep would be a good start for overcoming such notoriety.”  He closed his eyes and sighed. Taking that as tacit assent (though she hadn’t seen him eat anything all day) she slept, dreamlessly.

When she woke up, she was no longer lying in the grass.  She was in an officer’s bunk, standard Alliance issue.   Artificial flooring had replaced the grass.  Bits of a bulkhead blocked her view of the horizon.  It was as though she’d picked up a ten-foot wide circular slice of a spaceship and dropped it into the Fade.  

The tip of the wolf’s tail was still tickling her cheek.  She glanced over at it- it was awake, and regarding their surroundings suspiciously.  

“Do you think that if I took a longer nap, I could wake up to the entire Normandy?” she asked him. He snorted his disapproval at the idea. “Don’t be so dismissive,” she said. “I’d let you drive.  I never learned how.  ENG to XO, myself.  Are you good at navigation, doggo?”  Another snort.   “Of course you are.  Well, nothing can be done with a slice of a spaceship.  Lay on, Macduff.” 

The wolf trotted off as they’d done the previous ‘day.’  Shepard still didn’t know what Solas found so enchanting about the Fade.  The sky never changed, the scenery was no more interesting than the real world, and it was not as though the spirits she had met thus far had been fantastic company.  The wolf was the least traumatic yet, but he didn’t talk.  

Bored, she flipped on her omni-tool and started playing Gershwin.  Porgy and Bess fit her mood.  She saw the wolf’s ears swivel to listen in, but he made no other movement of either support or objection.  Shepard lost herself in the lyrics as they went, trying to remember the ballet she’d watched once on Elysium, just before the Blitz. 

Various wisps had shot by them throughout their journey.   Shepard tried to avoid them, generally- some had bits of nice memories, and some were not very nice at all.  They didn’t manifest what Shepard generally considered intelligence.  She was somewhat unresolved on the status of spirits as people; as loose as her definition had grown over the years (and despite Kaidan’s remonstrations, she’d never doubted that turians fit the bill), spirits might talk, and walk, and fight, and do all the things that people did, but they didn’t have free will, as Shepard understood it, and she had decided that’s where she would draw the line.  Not that it was a line she’d always respected.  But wisps were not even as personable, to put an anthropocentric twist on it, as spirits were.  So it was with only faint interest, giving rise to the mildest curiosity, that Shepard observed them drawing near and growing more numerous.  They kept a respectful distance.  Listening to the music, maybe? 

“You like that, guys?” she murmured.  “Want some more Nina Simone?”  She obliged them.  They bobbed in…pleasure? Dismay?  It was hard to tell.  The wolf had his ears swiveled towards them as though they were in some kind of silent communication. Possibly they were, for all Shepard knew.  

Abruptly, the wisps took off in a swarm, and the wolf altered his course to follow them, though at a more sedate pace.  Shepard hesitated for a moment, then followed him.  She had no better plan for finding her way back to…somewhere. 

When she caught up to them, the wisps had congregated around a bit of ruined stonework. It was no more significant in appearance than any other scrap of columns or arched windows that she’d passed.  

The wolf was sitting on his haunches at the edges of the ruined foundation, watching the gaggle of wisps.  He turned his head, and gave her a long blink with all those red eyes.  He set his ears back and gave a low whine.  Shepard walked to his side, and laid her hand on his head.  At the press of her hand, he slowly settled himself, and laid his head down on his front paws, watching the wisps. 

When one more wisp crossed the threshold of the ruin, as though reaching a critical mass, the ruins abruptly blurred into a hazy scene precisely overlaying the broken stonework. A crowd filled the small building. Elves, elaborately dressed.  It was a winter scene.  A firepit in the middle of the structure, carved benches and thick cushions.  Braziers in the corners.  Lap blankets. The elves were watching a singer: a middle aged woman, strong curves to her body, hair flowing down her back in a thick flow of beaded braids, arms gently moving to her song.  

Oh.  The words were different, but the basic melody was the same. It was “Summertime.”  The accompaniment was a harp, not a piano, and one of the listeners was tapping her foot where the snare drum would have hit. Such a very little bit of her world that these elves had kept.  It must have been a very long time ago. It was beautiful, and more alien for the smallest bit of familiarity the singing conveyed.  

She studied their faces, the elves who had once been humans contemporary with her first life.  It was hard to see any other connection.  Their clothing was ornate and vaguely martial, for all that it looked like a family gathering.  A couple in the center were seated on a gilded bench that suggested ‘throne,’ and their body language indicated command of the room.  Behind the woman, a soldier (by his gleaming golden armor) restlessly prowled, looking out the windows instead of watching the singer. He bent to whisper into the woman’s ear, his face obscured by his headdress, which was formed from the skull and pelt of a grey-furred wolf.  The seated man shot him a look of annoyance, and the woman delicately gestured the soldier away. She turned her head and looked in Shepard’s direction.  Although the scene was surely thousands of years past, she locked brilliant golden eyes with Shepard, and smiled. 

Melissa Cook’s eyes, in a long-dead elf’s face.  Shepard gave a brief, involuntary shudder.  The scene before her dissolved.   The wolf rose to his feet, radiating agitation.  He growled, and settled only when Shepard stroked her hand across his ruff again.

“You know what’s wrong with this place?” she asked him.  “It’s full of dead people.  Dead feelings, dead worlds, dead songs.” 

He sat on his haunches and bared his sharp white teeth at her, giving several decisive swishes of his tail. 

“Can you take me out of here?” she asked.  “I’d like to get back to the living.” 

He set his head back, and howled his agreement up at the hazy green sky. 

Chapter Text

It felt somehow illicit; he wasn’t certain why.  Of course the Chargers all knew it was happening, and several of them felt the need to make clever remarks about it.  What the scarred dwarf considered a light innuendo would be considered by polite society to border on pornography.  The Iron Bull was so nonchalant about the whole thing that he just knew there were analyses churning behind the single watchful eye, perhaps missives being sent to Seheron.  And when Cassandra found out, he thought there was a brief flash of…jealousy? That probably wasn’t the right word for it.  Resignation mixed with introspection, leavened with a twinge of self-doubt.  It should have been obvious why he couldn’t go to her. 

Cullen had to spar with someone, and Cassandra was so much better than him, and so constitutionally incapable of pulling her punches, that he would have ended every match in a worse condition than he’d started it in.  The Iron Bull might be his better with a blade, but he had the careful habits of large men who’d had to practice delicacy with the breakable rest of the world throughout their entire lives.  Cullen wasn’t injured by the end of their bouts, just tired. 

The only way he could sleep was to exhaust his mind and body by the close of each day. Every other distraction he could access- gaming, drinking, sex- seemed like a mere substitution for the vice of lyrium, not a cure.   Sparring with Bull was a prevention of his moral decay, not any progression of it, no matter what anyone else at Skyhold believed. 

Not that the Iron Bull ever made anything so explicit as an offer, but Cullen sensed that not only a workout but any other vice he might prefer was on tap, should he request it.   It was somehow more flattering than any of the fruit-scented smut shoved under his office door by the twittering Orlesian ladies who watched him travel to and from the War Room.  Not necessary, no, but flattering, all the same.  But sparring was all he and Bull ever discussed, and sparring was all they did. 

So they met in the Undercroft for an hour in the morning, half that in the evening, and they fought. Or they exercised.  Shepard had disseminated a regimen of calisthenics that she endorsed for soldiers of every caliber, and while there was nothing to stop Cullen from running with his troops, he preferred not to perform the push-ups, pull-ups, and other ‘ups’ specified by the Inquisitor within view of the public.  On account of the spectators. 

He knew the Iron Bull was taking it easy on him, and he appreciated that.  Truly.  Cullen didn’t anticipate that he would be personally engaged in any future melees. Cassandra hadn’t hired him for his sword arm, after all.  No, Bull pushed him not to become a better swordsman, but to become a better tactician. 

“Antivan assassin?” Bull would ask, and Cullen would fend off a flurry of quick little slashes towards his extremities- cuts that would never be disabling, even if they weren’t using blunted steel, but would deliver deadly poisons if they were allowed to land. Or Bull would say “Drunk Tal-Vashoth,” and bum-rush him with his greatsword fully extended. 

Bull was filling in the gaps in Cullen’s martial education.  They hadn’t discussed it, any more than they’d spoken about the dead Qunari Cole had dragged out of the hayloft the day after the Inquisition forces returned to Skyhold.  Nor did they discuss Bull’s future with the Inquisition, or what Bull would do if Shepard turned him out. 

“You know, ‘Vint mages use a lot more earth-based spells than your southern mages,” Bull told him. “You have to watch for dead stuff coming out of the ground and grabbing your feet.  Let’s run some footwork drills.” 

While he was all but resigned to looking like an idiot whenever the Inquisitor happened upon him, he wished he had not been doing high-stepping sprints when she wandered down to the Undercroft. 

They hadn’t spoken since she’d returned to Skyhold, trailed by the apostate elf.  She’d accepted the reports from the War Council, complemented them as a group for their professionalism and the putative success of the mission in Adamant, and withdrawn to her chambers to read their written summaries. 

His account of the decision to offer the remaining Wardens a choice between leaving Orlais and formally joining the Inquisition had been lengthy and, he feared, betrayed his personal misgivings.  He’d accepted the enlistment of no more than a quarter of the surviving Wardens only after Cassandra reminded him that Shepard had never turned away any potential allies.  Clarel had taken the bulk of the forces off to Weisshaupt; the remainder were folded into the Inquisition military structure.  Not Blackwall’s command: the man had refused without explanation. Knight-Captain Rylen accepted the challenge instead with his usual equanimity.  If the Wardens were nonplussed when instructed to dig wells and distribute water purification kits to refugees instead of fighting darkspawn, those reports had not tricked up to Cullen.  In any event, Cullen’s long, painful summary of the events at Adamant was sent back to him two days after Shepard’s return with the simple endorsement “good” in her crabbed, child-like scrawl. 

Which ought to have been enough.  She trusted him, that was good; he was performing his duties adequately, that was good too.  Still, he felt the same uncomfortable wave of self-consciousness upon her arrival as ever.

Luckily, she was there to talk to the Iron Bull instead of him. 

She wasn’t wearing the odd, chitinous black armor she’d returned in.  Cassandra panicked when she first saw it, and did not relax until Leliana’s “arcanist” cleared Shepard of any untoward magics.  Cullen was not fond of it either.  The Shepard who wore that armor, with its blood red streak down the arm, was even further from him than the Shepard who felled her enemies with a thought and calmly conjured miracles in the air.  Shepard in her black armor looked through him, as though her eyes were always searching for a further horizon to orient herself. 

Instead, she was clad the simple black knit cotton trousers and tunic she favored.  She waved a folded letter at Bull. 

“I got an invitation to stop a Venatori shipment of red lyrium on the Storm Coast with a Qunari dreadnought.  Could you ask your people to move the ambush to somewhere a bit more temperate?  Or could they try to kill me nearer to Skyhold instead?  I’m done with travel for a while.”

The Iron Bull carefully wiped his greatsword down with a bit of mineral oil and sheathed it.  Cullen relaxed muscles he wasn’t aware he had tensed. 

“Yeah, I heard about that,” he said, rubbing his eye patch absently.  “Not that it was an ambush. The faction in the Ben-Hassrath that want to kidnap you aren’t involved in the Venatori thing.”

Shepard’s upper lip curled.  

“Oh, let’s hear about the factions that don’t want to kidnap me.  Do they want to kill me?  And where?”

Bull sighed, shoulders folding. 

“It’s a big…what’s the word for it they have down here?  Clusterfucking?”

A little noise, whether of amusement or disbelief he wasn’t certain, escaped Cullen.  Appalled at himself, he tried to swallow it, which set off a choking fit.  Bull slapped him on the back, which drove him to his knees.  Shepard smirked. 

“Hang in there, commander,” said Bull, absently.  “Anyway, I’ve been getting multiple sets of orders, which I have been ‘rationalizing’ into doing not very much of all until the Triumvirate finish tripping over each other’s dicks.  Metaphorically speaking.  I’m not sure the new Ariqun has one.  The last one fell on his sword last month for failing to anticipate you falling out of a rift and starting the Inquisition.  The Tamassrans and the Ben-Hassrath each got behind different candidates, and one wants you brought to Qunandar in a barrel for them to poke at, and the other one…I’m not sure.  Want to put you in charge if you’d convert, maybe?  It’s not totally clear to me.  The Storm Coast thing is a good will gesture from the faction that thinks you’re the next coming of Koslun.”

“Why would I bother with it?” Shepard asked, poking through the pile of practice equipment by the stairs. 

Bull sighed.  “Look, I know you haven’t exactly gotten to see the best side of the Qun.  And I’m sure Hawke, if you’ve talked to her about it, doesn’t have good feelings about the pointy end of the Beresaad.  But the Qun has a lot of positives to it too.  It’s liberated a lot of elves from slavery, it keeps its people fed and housed, and it’s good at making stuff.”

“Hmmm,” said Shepard, noncommittally.  “Cullen, what do you think?” 

Cullen flushed.  He thought she’d forgotten he was there.  He cleared his throat.  “A Venatori plot’s a Venatori plot.  Maybe if they see you in action, they’ll quit poking at our defenses here at Skyhold.”  He smiled in thought.  “And I always did want to see what one of those dreadnoughts could do.  I guess I’ll get your report on it. With…vids?” 

Shepard grinned at him. “I wouldn’t have guessed you liked big boats, Cullen.” 

Was that a….surely not.  

“I’ll think about it,” Shepard said.  “I’ve got a lot to do around the old castle.  Bianca’s installing the electrical wiring in the tower tomorrow, and I’m sure there’s going to be at least one electrocution.  I should probably be here for that.” 

“We’ve got some time, boss,” said Bull.  “I’m not real eager to put my guys in the middle of Qunari politics.  They’re even sweeter and more innocent than Cullen.” 

 * * * 

Solas traced one finger down Shepard’s naked spine, chasing a lingering drop of water from her bath. Even as cold as the Frostbacks were, at the top of Skyhold’s tower, at midday, with the sun streaming through the stained-glass windows, it was warm in Shepard’s chamber, and she was lounging on her stomach as she dried off. 

He’d barely seen her since their return to Skyhold.  She hadn’t seemed surprised to step out of a rift in a Hinterlands cave and find him waiting for her, but neither had she asked him any pointed questions about the wolf, the Evanuris, or any other subject that might bring his lies and omissions tumbling into review.  When she looked at him, her gaze wasn’t accusatory, or confused, it was….thoughtful. She was clever, but not incisive. Forgiving, yet implacable.  He had no idea whether she had connected him to the first elves, yet, nor whether she would be angry when she did.  He only knew she wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate him if she thought he was in her way.  So neither of them had anything to say to each other at the present.  

They could talk about the Inquisition, the marvels that Bianca and Dagna were churning out of the Underforge every day, the search for Corypheus- everything except themselves. He had her summary to the War Council of what had occurred in the Fade.  Neither he nor any wolf were featured in it.  He knew he should be grateful for that fact.   But he felt like the entire bloody history of the Evanuris was a snare pulling him away from every moment he spent in Shepard’s arms, Shepard’s bed, and the disconnect between his two lives was threatening to sunder his mind.

It was hard to remember that he was the Dread Wolf, Betrayer of Worlds, Mythal’s favored general, immortal Elvhen, citizen of Arlathan when he kneeled next to his alien lover, caressing her bare skin while she read schematics for some new bizarre device. 

Ah.  The “swamp cooler.”  Josephine and Bianca thought it would bring the Inquisition more gold than it could spend in a year.  Gold would be good- the Orlesian civil war had left too many fields unplowed, or worse, trampled over by competing armies.  Alienages were already experiencing food shortages this summer- it would be worse if the war was not resolved in time for the fall harvest. He would ask his agents to draft specific pleas for aid to the Inquisition on behalf of the alienages in eastern Orlais.  He had been able to send instructions on food preservation from Glyph across his network already, but Shepard seemed prepared to eliminate hunger altogether with her transportation initiatives. 

He could almost imagine Shepard’s world.  All of the races of Thedas living together in harmony, fat and happy, free of war and want. It would never give the elves what they had lost when he’d lifted up the Veil- immortality, magical constructs drawn from the Fade, the close company of spirits- but it would give them back what Elgar’nan had taken from them first.   Which did they need more?  Did he have the right to judge?  Who in the world except he was left to judge?

Shepard let the papers fall to the floor and twisted over to face him. 

“Andraste should have sent a Herald with a degree in Colony Administration instead of Classical Literature,” she said, stretching in a way that did distracting things to her breasts. 

“I do not see any room for improvement,” said Solas, tracing a fingertip along her collarbone. 

“I’m sure there are colony administrators who look just as good,” Shepard said dryly. 

“I wouldn’t know,” Solas said.  (Thought wasn’t that a lie?  He had known some.  Known them every way you could know anyone.  Seen them naked.  Anaris’ hand on the back of his neck, holding him down, too much biting, he knew he liked power but didn’t know about the pain….forget that.).  “From right here, you look perfect.” 

Her smile twisted. “You haven’t learned otherwise, yet. It’s all just good sex and amazing discoveries so far.  Wait until you find out what a bitch I can be when I have a head cold.” 

“Just good sex?” he asked, letting his fingertip trail down between her breasts, around her navel, through the small patch of hair between her legs.  

“I’m doing my best,” Shepard said modestly.  “I’ll confess that I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to practice the finer arts of love. An Alliance career doesn’t really provide for a lot of time to spend lazing around in bed.  You do what you can with fifteen minutes of privacy and a reasonably sturdy bulkhead.  I’m pretty sure you’ve already experienced all my best tricks.  Usually I get redeployed before I have to start the rotation over again.” 

He started gently running his fingertip back and forth between her legs, like a piece of yarn dangled for a cat.

“Do you plan to throw me over and begin again with someone new, then?” he asked, eyes hooded. 

Shepard crossed her arms behind her head.  She smirked at him. 

“No, just I’ll just lie back and let you do all the work from here on out,” she said.  “I’m fresh out of ideas.”  

She made him laugh, always. Had there ever been anyone who made him laugh before?  He couldn’t remember.

Using his knee, he flipped her back onto her stomach. 

“I can’t wait until you have a headcold to find out what you’re like when even you think you’re being unreasonable,” he said, leaning over to nip her at the top of one muscular buttock.  She shook with silent laughter. 

He unlaced his pants, didn’t wait to pull the rest of his clothes off.  He nudged her legs apart, and slid into her from behind.  

“You just lie there, I am not out of tricks,” he whispered into her ear as he moved against her. That was true. Shepard was enthusiastic and unashamed in bed, but he'd had centuries to experience every kind of titillation and depravity possible inside and outside of the Fade.  If he had the ability to shock her, he looked forward to it.  

He came with his face buried in her sweet-smelling dark hair and the raspy sound of her breathing filling the room.  He was hot now, too, so he finally removed his clothing and lay on his stomach next to her, faces turned into each other. 

She lifted one languid hand and brushed his cheek with a knuckle, then his scalp. 

“Did you forget to shave?” she asked, scratching the fuzz at the back of his neck. 

“I’m thinking of growing it out,” he said.  “The hair only, not the beard.  I used to have quite a bit of it.”

She pursed her lips, imagining it. 

“I’d like to see it,” she said.  “I think you would look wild.  Maybe a little younger.” 

“I’ve been feeling both,” he told her honestly. 

* * * 

“Leliana,” Singer said in flat greeting when she entered the cell. 

“You don’t think code names are appropriate in this situation?” Leliana asked her agent, one delicate eyebrow lifted. 

“Don’t figure this one is going to be leaving this room,” the blond Fereldan woman said, unimpressed, gesturing to the bound and hooded prisoner kneeling in the center of the floor. 

Leliana’s lips compressed in a thin line.  That was true, and she didn’t mind the prisoner knowing that, but sloppy language bred sloppy habits.   Well. That was Charter’s problem to address. She was here to talk to the prisoner. To hear her story from her own lips.

“Geraldine Fleury,” she said to the prisoner, ripping off the woman’s hood at the same time.  The young elf blinked back big, fat tears out of her bloodshot brown eyes.  “You were discovered spying upon the Inquisition forces in the White Tower, and stealing from the grain stores.  When you were accosted by the tower guards, you fought back using a weapon carrying projectile explosives, killing one and wounding another.”

Leliana hoisted the weapon in her left hand.  It was formed of walnut and iron, with a small, complex trigger device like Varric’s crossbow.  Nobody in the Inquisition had ever seen anything like it before, though she had not asked Shepard.  She’d heard Shepard’s description, though.  It was a ‘rifle.’  Bianca had not even gotten to the prototype stage with the like. 

“Will you tell us now who you are working for?  Where this came from?”  Leliana pulled the wad of rags out of the woman’s mouth, wrinkling her nose in displeasure at the rope of saliva that followed it 

At Leliana's nod, Singer poured a bit from her canteen over the woman’s tongue to enable her to spit. 

When she recovered her ability to speak, the prisoner stuttered out a string of denials, which Singer cut off with a firm slap to the back of her head. 

“No more of that now, we’re past that,” Singer told her curtly.

“This is not about what you have done,” Leliana reminded the prisoner.  “There were witnesses, and you have already been judged for your crimes. This is for me to hear in your own words who gave you the rifle.  Was it the Carta?  The Qunari?”

The elf sniffled and sniveled a little more, then bit her lip at Leliana. 

“If I tell you, can I just go to prison instead?” she said.  “Cooperators get dispensations, right?  Privileges?  I know a lot.” 

“Of course,” Leliana lied. “But you must start our relationship somewhere.  On a foundation of truth.  Start telling the truth now, and we can build a deal together.”

“Right,” said the elf, looking at the floor, building her courage.  “He’ll kill me anyway.  But I guess you’ll kill me faster, if I don’t talk.”

“Who?” Singer pressed her, taking a hunk of the woman’s hair in her hand.  “Who is your master?”

“Fen’harel,” the woman gasped at last. 

Chapter Text

The Storm Coast mission was like an anthology of Varric’s least favorite things: rain, wilderness, red lyrium, Qunari, and politics.  The Inquisitor didn’t order him to come.  She’d asked- not ordered- Hawke to come, based upon her experience negotiating with the Arishok.  (Varric, as author, might have downplayed Fenris’ involvement in all previous discussions with the Qunari- Hawke’s “negotiations” with the Arishok had consisted of a long string of sexual innuendos intermixed with bad puns).  But it wasn’t as though Varric was prepared to allow his wife to have anything to do with the Qunari without him there to keep her on the straight and narrow.  The last time she’d gone to “negotiate” with the Qunari, she’d left a vague note about helping Isabela track down a book, started a war, then gotten impaled.  The point was, things could escalate quickly around Hawke if Varric wasn’t there to manage them.

The little elven Qunari agent who was their contact seemed determined to ignore Hawke’s presence, though Varric was positive he’d recognized her.

“I was hoping you’d be Tallis,” Hawke told him.  “She was funny.  Absolute wildcat in the sack, too.”

Everyone frowned at Hawke.

“Monogamy,” Varric whispered at her. 

“It was ages ago,” Hawke sniffed.

“I can’t vouch for your sexual prowess,” Bull said to the elf.  “Though I’m happy to see you.  But this doesn’t seem like your kind of deal, Gatt.  Why are you here?” 

“I asked to come,” Gatt insisted.  “Things are such a mess, Hissrad.  The infighting has spilled into open conflict, and not just on Par Vollen. The Arishok is pulling the antaam back out of Seheron because he can’t trust the intelligence the Ben-Hassrath are sending.  We need to reach some kind of accord with the Inquisition, or things may really start to fall apart.” 

“That your opinion, or the official Ben-Hassrath line?” Bull asked him. 

“Has there ever been a difference before?” Gatt asked him.  

Bull rubbed his shorn scalp. “I don’t know, Gatt.  Things are weird, these days.”

Gatt stepped closer to him. “Let’s just get this mission done. Show the Inquisition what we’re about. It’s the first step to fixing things.”

He briefly explained the situation: a Venatori smuggling line run out of a hidden port along the Storm Coast.  He wanted the Inquisition to take out both the Venatori mages guarding the port and the Red Templars waiting to cart the red lyrium away. 

Shepard was wearing her black armor and her war face.  She pulled out the device she’d brought home from the Fade, and ostentatiously checked it in front of the Qunari agent. 

“Shouldn’t be much of a problem to take out both groups,” she told him.  “But remind me what I’m getting out of this again?  It’s not like I have trouble finding either Venatori or Red Templars who want to kill me.  They’re all over the place.” 

Gatt gestured out to sea. “You haven’t seen the power of the Qun,” he said.  “Nobody has bothered to project force down south in hundreds of years.  We want to show you what the Qun can do.  I’ve heard all about you, Inquisitor.  You’re practically Qunari already.”

Shepard arched an eyebrow. “Tell me how you get that,” she said, skepticism on her face.  

Gatt gestured at her armor and weapon.  “You’ve brought order out of chaos.  You adapt and evolve.  You do whatever it takes to accomplish your goals, using whatever tools you have in hand.” 

“That could describe just about anyone,” she said coolly.  

“They might say it, but you’ve done it,” Gatt insisted.  “Hissrad’s always done the same.  I thought he was the best example of what the Qun could be.  But you should see what he writes about you- it’s like he thinks you’re a better embodiment of the Qun than the Qunari.” 

Bull actually looked like he was blushing.  Varric hadn’t seen a Qunari blush before. 

Shepard cracked her neck from side to side.  “Well, it’s an opportunity to test the shotgun on the Red Templars, anyway. Bull, are your guys ready to go after the Venatori?”

Bull led his Chargers in a few rounds of ‘Horns up!’ and sent them off down the coast in high spirits.  

Hawke flounced up the hill at the head of their group. 

“We should send Fenris a letter!” she shouted back at Varric.  “Tell him I met some Qunari and didn’t kill them or sleep with them!” 

“He’ll be so impressed that you’re expanding to new modes of interpersonal interaction,” Varric told her.  

“I have to set an example for him and Isabela,” she said proudly, aiming a bolt of lightning at a group of sleeping Red Templars up the slope. 

Shepard was much more deadly against the Red Templars now that she had her little projectile weapon in hand.  Hawke was an old hand at killing Templars, and pulled pure physical force from the Fade to smash them to the ground, where Shepard was able to simply aim her gun at the unprotected backs of their necks and dispatch them.  Varric kept up a curtain of covering fire to keep stragglers from coming to the rescue of the heavily armored main group, and Gatt darted in to cut throats.  Bull yelled and swung his big sword around and generally kept attention on him. Together, they cleared the bluff in a matter of moments.

They stood as a group at the edge of the cliff and watched the dreadnought sail in.  Hawke whistled.  It was enormous, black, metallic, and deadly-looking.

“How many sailors does she hold?” Shepard asked idly, and she and Gatt started chatting about the specifications of the boat.  Varric took the opportunity to loot the corpses.   Hawke liked jewelry, and she always said it was more meaningful when he killed the prior owner himself. 

“Oh shit,” said Hawke. 

That was not a good phrase, out of Hawke. 

Varric snapped his head up and followed the line of Hawke’s arm as she pointed down the hill. 

Another, larger group of Venatori were coming up on the Chargers’ position.   The Chargers had taken out the first group covering the port, but would quickly be overrun by the second group if they didn’t retreat quickly.

Gatt gave a good show of shock and horror.  The dreadnaught’s guns could not reach the port, and it was vulnerable to magical fire from the shore if the Chargers left their position.  He insisted that the Chargers hold their position long enough for the dreadnaught to get away.  

Bull was distraught when Gatt finished explaining the situation.  He was sucking in air through his gritted teeth and looking at Shepard for direction. Varric hated to see a big man panic, since it usually meant things were looking even grimmer for small men such as himself.  

Gatt ranted at Bull, said that he’d be dooming all the Qunari on the ship and declaring himself Tal Vashoth if he didn’t sacrifice the Chargers to save the boat. 

Bull remained silent, pleading with Shepard with his eyes. 

Gatt turned his attention to Shepard, since he wasn’t getting anywhere with Bull. 

“Inquisitor, the Arigena is on that boat!  This alliance could mean everything to my people and yours.  This is the future of the Qunari we’re talking about!  Please, show us you know what it means to sacrifice for a greater cause.”

Shepard had been watching the scene impassively, arms folded.  At that last from Gatt, she turned to look straight at him.  Her face was cold and distant.  She and the small elf were of a height, but she somehow managed to sneer down her small blade of a nose. 

She locked eyes with him, and everyone was still for a moment, watching the two of them.   In a movement that was almost casual- she didn’t look away, she didn’t say a word- Shepard punched the elf in the nose with a stiff, gauntleted fist. 

Bull made a broken, frightened sound, though he didn’t move to stop her.  The elf coughed as blood spurted from his broken face.  He brought both hands up defensively to cover his streaming nose.

Shepard grabbed him by his shirtfront and lifted him in the air using her left arm.  The elf’s feet dangled an inch or two off the ground. That's right, Varric's mind said in a little voice, she's actually very scary and could kill us all with her mind and bare hands if she wanted to.  Better walk back slowly.  

“You slimy little shitweasel,” she snarled at Gatt.  “You expect me to believe you didn’t know about the reinforcements?  This is a fucking test!”  The last word was ejected with utter disgust.  

Gatt dangled and tried to keep his airway open as he sputtered blood and snot alike.  His hands scrabbled ineffectually at the fist holding him aloft.  

Shepard kneed him in the balls and dropped him to the ground.  He rolled into the fetal position and coughed. 

Shepard spat on the ground in his general direction. 

“Well?” she asked Bull, pointing at him.  “What do you want to do?  Just because this little buddyfucker set us up, doesn’t mean the ship’s not going down. Are you going to call a retreat?”  She tapped her foot, radiating both anger and impatience. Varric wrapped his hand around Hawke's wrist and pulled her closer to him.  

“Hissrad,” moaned Gatt. Shepard silenced him with a swift kick to the solar plexus.  He moaned and rolled to his other side.

The Bull’s face was drawn in strain, lips pulled back over his teeth.  “What are your orders, boss?” he whispered.

Shepard shook her head. “They got us here.  Here we are.  Now you have to choose.  You have to choose or you’ll never own this,” she told him. 

Bull compressed his lips together so hard they trembled.  His arm shook too when he lifted the horn to his lips.   But the sound of the retreat call was loud and strong. Varric saw the Chargers turn towards the sound, then scramble to begin to fall back from their position.

“Good man,” said Shepard, reaching up to pat Bull on his shoulder.  Then she shook her wrist out, checked her gun one more time, and streamed down the embankment towards the Venatori in a blaze of blue energy. 

Bull stepped forward and stared after her, mouth hanging open in shock. 

Gatt managed to pull himself to his hands and knees.  He tore a bit of turf from the ground and tried to swab at his gory lips.  Hawke tilted her head to watch him, sidled up next to him, then viciously kicked him in the stomach one more time, for good measure. He gurgled and rolled over to his back, staring up at the sky.  Hawke shrugged and held up her palms when Varric shot her a disappointed look. 

“That dreadnought is going to explode,” Gatt whispered.  “With the Arigena and all those people on it.  I told them Hissrad would never let his people die.  I told them!”

“Nah,” said Varric, pulling his handkerchief out of his pocket and handing it over to the elf, who started to clean the mess off his face.  “Inquisitor will fix it.  I don’t think you were wrong about Bull, though.” 

Bull’s color was improving as he watched Shepard zip across the battlefield.  Her barrier deflected the magic aimed her way, and the projectiles from her gun were cutting the unarmored Venatori mages nearly in two with each blast.  The Chargers had regrouped and were cheering her on.  Once Shepard cut the group down to a manageable level, they stumbled down the hill to join in.  The dreadnaught slowly pulled in to dock.

“Uh, sweetheart? Perhaps we should all be out of here before the Qunari disembark and ask what happened to their elf?” Varric suggested to Hawke. 

Bull snorted. “They’ll be impressed, it what they’ll be.  I’m the only fucking Tal-Vashoth here.  They’ll probably still offer Shepard the alliance.”  

They watched as Shepard’s black-armored figure tossed the final Venatori against a cliff face, then turned to the ship. 

She looked at it for a moment, then turned decisively away. 

“Good seeing you, Gatt,” Bull said softly. 

The elf gasped out a faint laugh.  “Wish I could say the same, Tal-Vashoth.”

 * * *

Solas took the opportunity of Shepard’s trip to the Storm Coast to return to the Fade.  While Hawke had many personal deficiencies, she was at a minimum as skeptical of the Qun as he was.  He did not worry for the Inquisitor’s safety in his absence.  Hawke was lethal as well as skeptical. He needed time to walk the Fade, time he’d lacked when searching for her after the events at Adamant.  If he slept in Shepard's bed, wrapped in the sheets that preserved her scent- well, her chambers had more privacy than the little couch in the rotunda, and her bed was of course more comfortable.

He needed the time asleep to find answers.  True sleep, not the light descent into uthenera he had undertaken to escort Shepard home through the Fade.  Uthenera allowed him unlimited time in the Fade but weakened his body and his corresponding presence in the Fade.  He needed to be ready to fight in either the Fade or the physical plane.  His long sleep had already weakened him too much. He could no longer simply observe. He needed to be able to act. 

He prowled the Fade near Skyhold, searching for answers.  Terasyl’an Tel’as held none- he remembered the day he’d laid the keystone himself.  And he had known nothing of a past sprouting around distant suns.  But he’d awakened in a world already full of spirits, who had fought and loved and died with him for all his many years.  The humans had forgotten even more than his people, but he thought they had it right when they called spirits the first children. Spirits were as old or older than the Evanuris, and they owed him some answers. 

Without access to the Eluvian network, he was limited in the area he could reach.  Still, there were many spirits and wisps nearby, gathered to watch the Inquisition.  Some he knew, some were strangers.  None could tell him about spacefarers named Oliver, or Melissa, or Gillian.  None could tell him of a time before elves, before dwarves, before they were made by the people he’d called family.  Ir abelas, ir abelas, they whispered, wondering. 

“Perhaps in the Golden City?” asked a spirit of curiosity.  “Or you could ask Dirthamen.  He always tells me the most wonderful stories.” 

“Dirthamen and Arlathan alike have been severed from the Fade for thousands of years,” he snarled at it.

“Ir abelas,” said the spirit, diffidently.  “I have been thinking about shoes for a long time.  Do you know that the women in Val Royeaux are wearing wedges with wooden heels this year?  They look so heavy!” 

Solas growled like his lupine form, and walked away from it. 

He had not seen Wisdom for several weeks.  Usually the spirit trailed him as he went, following his doings from the other side of the Veil.  But he had warned it away from Adamant before the fight- Wisdom was gentle- and his friend had not joined him again since they escaped Nightmare’s domain.  

He wondered if Wisdom had something to hide.  The spirit had been a favorite of Mythal’s, as well. 

“Wisdom!” he called. “Wisdom!  Sileal!”  

He set out on a spiraling path, letting his magic carry the call further than his voice would. “Wisdom!”

Other spirits were paying attention to him, the gentler ones beginning to shift away.

“Wisdom!”  He was not accustomed to waiting to speak to the spirits he needed.  He was a patient man, but he had his limits. 

“Wisdom!  I need to speak to you.”  He was beginning to get angry.  Wisdom had never failed to come to him before.

“Wisdom?  Did you know?”  He was screaming now.  Darker spirits of the Fade were attracted to his mood; rage had crept up on him as he walked.  He sank to his knees. 

Wisdom must have known. Had known and decided not to tell him. What use was served by his ignorance? Or whose use? 

“This is why you were always such a poor hunter,” said a voice behind him.  “I still remember you screaming at the poor hare who had the effrontery to run down his burrow rather than become your dinner.  All his friends hid for the rest of the afternoon, and we had mushroom soup for dinner.” 

“I had mushroom soup,” he told Asha’bellanar, turning.  “You flew back to Andruil’s lodge and dined on roast lamb, if I recall correctly.”

It had long been painful for him to see her in this guise- even in shining armor, hair bound, he had thought her diminished by her human body.  But was this closer to her original form?  Was this not a diminishment, but a return?  Her golden eyes were the only constant from the earliest days when he had known her. 

“Memory is such a fickle thing,” she mused.  “It is history written on wet sand.  The years roll to and fro, and even if the tide remains, the words do not.”

“Do not toy with me, All-Mother,” Solas gritted out at her.  “I am well aware that your wisdom can deflect, as well as enlighten.”

She laughed, and it was not a nice sound.  

“Do you think to rebuke me for keeping secrets, Fen’Harel?” she asked. “I fear that if we grasp that blade, we will find that neither of us holds the hilt.” 

“I fear,” he repeated sourly.  “Do not start this long-overdue conversation with a lie.” 

She set her hands on her hips and laughed again, ostentatiously this time. 

“Oh, I have missed you, ma’fen,” she said.  “But I shall not keep you.  You were not looking for me, in any event.  You seek your friend.  It is not here.”

He studied her, waiting. It was often best to simply let her say her piece, than reveal his hand by asking questions.  He never could manage Mythal, but he could endure her.

Her eyes glittered at him. “Search the Halin’sulahn.  You’ll likely want to take your new commander.” Her mouth twisted and lingered on that final phrase. 

He snorted.  “Are you jealous now, after all these years?”

She stepped closer to him, patted his cheek with a wrinkled hand. He steeled himself not to flinch away. 

“Not if you serve her as well as you did me,” she said with sweet poison. 

Chapter Text

Shepard liked to take her lunch in the rotunda, rather than the mess.  She was usually up with the other soldiers, well before Solas, and had developed an enjoyable Skyhold routine: morning exercises in the yard with whoever cared to join her, breakfast in the mess, executive session with the War Council, then she would retire to the rotunda with a stack of long-form reports, and read them on the couch while Solas painted. 

Someone would bring them sandwiches, and he would put down his paintbrush and she would put down her reports.  

“You paint,” she said, wondering, the first day she walked in and found him sketching out the start of the forms on the wall.

“Surely you have hobbies,” he responded. 

“I really don’t,” she said, fascinated by the powders and brushes and emulsifiers. 

“What did you do in your time not engaged in war?” he asked her, laying aside his brush. 

“I got drunk,” Shepard said, scratching her scalp.  “Sometimes we went dancing, too.”

He smiled.  “I would enjoy dancing with you. But what about at the end of a day?”

Shepard tried to remember if there had ever been an ‘end’ of a day on the Normandy.  “I kept tropical fish?  I had to tinker with the water chemistry constantly or they would all die.” 

Solas pursed his lips. “I am trying to imagine it.  But I suppose we could get you a pet?”

Shepard laughed.  “I’m bringing in tubs of carp.  They can all be my pets.  And we can eat them.” 

Solas laughed less, these days.

But even Shepard could see him relax when he had the time to paint and putter around his drafting table. And it relaxed Shepard to watch him relax.  It helped that people seemed less inclined to bother her if they had to contend with Solas’ frown as well.  Anything truly urgent was still brought in, but the reports that could be summed up as, ‘I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, plan to continue,’ would hit someone else’s desk instead of hers.  

So when an Inquisition guard hustled in, Shepard put down her summary of the antibiotic production lines in Crestwood (the bread starters had been consumed by hungry refugees, rather than distilled for mold) and sat up at attention. 

“Your Holiness, there is an elf who says he’s a Qunari at the gates to see you,” the copper-skinned Antivan reported. 

Shepard sighed.  She was feeling very done with the Qunari, for the moment. 

“Don’t we keep cauldrons full of boiling oil for situations like this?” she asked.

The guard’s face contorted as he tried to determine whether or not Shepard was joking.  He apparently came down on ‘not.’

“Er, no, your worship, but I think the cook made soup…?  Is…that how you would like him dispatched?” he asked hesitantly.

Shepard opened her mouth to clarify that the elf should be sent away instead of scalded with cabbage carp chowder, but a voice came down from the top of the tower before she could speak.

“It’s the one you beat into a pulp up on the Storm Coast, isn’t it?” Leliana called down.  “I have to meet him.  Maybe give him some kind of diplomatic award for surviving the Inquisitor!” 

Figured that Leliana would know as soon as she did.  Solas hid a smile. 

“Send him in,” Shepard sighed again.

She felt a tiny pang of conscience when she saw Gatt’s mangled face.  Just a tiny one, though.  He’d found someone to set his nose, and nothing else seemed broken. But he was moving stiffly, and his face was a mass of bruises and broken capillaries.  He bowed in the doorway, and cautiously approached her, halting in the center of the room. 

She sighed again. 

“Come here, you little shitbird.  No, closer. Closer.  I could kill you from over here.  I need you to come closer.  Solas, come give me a hand.”

Solas carefully wiped off his brushes and descended from his scaffold.  Discerning her intent, he set a hand on her wrist as she none too gently took the Qunari elf’s head in her hands.   Directing Solas’ power, she sent it flowing through the elf’s body.  Oh, he had some broken ribs and minor internal bleeding too.  She took care of that, then smoothed the cosmetic issues from his face.  She left the nose broken, though.  He needed a little reminder not to blade his friends.

“Nicely done,” Solas complimented her.  “You are improving.”

Gatt looked more shaken at her use of magic than he had when she’d been kicking his ass. 

Solas nodded at the Qunari. “Mages under the Qun are bound and chained.  They study only the magics of war.”

“Lovely,” said Shepard. “Let’s add that to the list of things we’ll try to stop doing before the galactic community finds out about us.”

Gatt visibly pulled himself together.   He was a man who was clearly having a bad day at the end of what had been a lengthy string of bad days.

“Inquisitor, the Arigena wishes to congratulate you on a successful mission against the Venatori and Red Templars,” he began. 

“’Successful?’”  Solas interrupted.  “Did you accomplish even one of your goals?”

“From the Inquisition’s perspective,” Gatt clarified stiffly 

“Ah,” Shepard said, with faux sympathy.  “It was one hell of a critique, huh?”  Gatt winced.

“He is likely one hairs-breadth away from reconditioning,” Solas said.  “If he fails to gain your cooperation today, he’ll spend the rest of his days raking sweet potatoes in Seheron, unable to remember his own name. Such as it is.” 

“I am one person, and irrelevant to the dealings between the Qun and the Inquisition,” Gatt said.  “I am just the messenger.”

She felt a bit of sympathy, that he really believed that.

“Ok, spit it out,” she told him.  “What do you want?”

“The alliance, still,” said Gatt.  “Our intelligence and southern assets in aid of your goals.  Your technology in aid of ours.”

Shepard shook her head. “I don’t think you understand what my goals are.”

“You want to stop Corypheus. Close the Fade rifts.  Restore order in the south,” Gatt said. 

Shepard gave him half a smile.  “No. I don't really care that much about any of those things.  Those are the symptoms, not the disease.”

Gatt's expression was resigned.  “Are you sure you’re not Qunari?  You definitely sound like a tamassran.” 

“Look, Gatt,” Shepard told him.  “If you want to put a few units of Qunari under my command, I won’t say no.  And you can tell Leliana anything you want- maybe she’ll even believe your intelligence.  But I’m not signing up for your cult.  Your set of prejudices and superstitions aren’t better or worse than anyone else’s here- just different.  Have Josephine give you my handy brochure on modern aquaculture, and take a copy of the Alliance charter for your troubles.  I hope you don’t get re-educated.” 

Recognizing a dismissal when he heard it, Gatt sketched another bow and took his leave.

“Marvelously done!” came a voice from the upper gallery.  “I am composing a poem in honor of what I just witnessed.  Perhaps a sestina?” 

Could everyone in Skyhold hear everything that went on in the rotunda?  Shepard ran through her interactions with Solas- nothing blue, she thought.  Hoped.

“A sestina would be a terrible vehicle to describe the Qunari,” Bull rumbled in his baritone. “You can’t rhyme it, for one.” 

“Don’t challenge him,” called Varric, from the front alcove.  “That’s the sort of thing authors take to heart. He’ll do it just to spite you.” 

“Safari,” Dorian said contemplatively. “But six times? That’ll be a stretch.” 

There was a pregnant pause. 

“That’s what you said last night,” Varric, Bull, and Leliana announced at once. 

Solas was hiding a small smirk in the collar of his tunic.  Shepard bit back a final sigh. 

Chapter Text

The Exalted Plains were a disgrace.  A shame. An obscenity.  The grasslands could have been Mindoir- might, in fact, have been seeded with a similar terraforming package.  Shepard thought she recognized the grass. 

In Mindoir’s 40 years of colonial history there had been exactly two murders of humans by humans.  One was what was still colloquially called a “domestic dispute,” and the other was the result of a drunken brawl between neighbors over the ownership of a boundary tree.  Two deaths, four decades.  The ample resources, commonality of purpose, and mandatory mental health screening for colonists had eliminated most triggers to violence in the Traverse among humans.

Humans believed they had overcome their legacy of violence.  Not because they had eliminated the genetic tendency to strike out in fear or anger, but because they had created systems to contain it. They taught their children about the Somme, the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanking.  Humans knew not to kill humans.

“The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori,” Shepard quoted through gritted teeth.  They had read them all- The Charge of the Light Brigade, Night, First They Killed My Father.  Not at the University of Toronto, in rooms of glass and polished wood which reflected the branches of maple trees, but at Gagarin Station, in metal and gas and void.   Alliance officers were made to understand what men in uniform could do to other humans, and they learned that lesson when all the comforting lies they might have told themselves about their dependence on each other were stripped away. 

An officer of the Orlesian army approached them, attempted to explain why he fought.  Shepard stared through him and his words died in his throat. The air was thick with the sweet and bitter taste of burning bodies.  Flakes of ash that had been living bodies landed on their eyelashes until they wrapped scarves around their faces. 

Shepard turned away, walked south.

Solas says a spirit is trapped, and that spirit is his friend.  He says it nonchalantly, but Shepard has learned to read him, a little, and his hands are tight and anxious.  He is afraid to show it matters, since the things that matter don’t last.  Shepard understands that feeling, even if she can’t understand how you can be friends with one.  They travel across rocky plains until they hear screaming. 

The spirit tries to kill them, but Shepard doesn’t hold that against it, since many of her best friends have tried to kill her at various points.  When Solas shatters the pillars that trap it, and then sinks to his knees in despair, Shepard decides she owes it to him to try to save the spirit anyway. 

She kneels down next to him, bats his hands down as he reaches out to the spirit.  It looks at her with whirling black and green eyes and speaks Elvhen words that Shepard still cannot translate.  But she understands the emotion, and so she reaches out to it instead.  It shudders when Shepard touches it, and the black and green swirl through it more violently.

Shepard identifies the root of the conflict.   The spirit’s purpose is wisdom- not wisdom in the abstract sense, but the specific wisdom of moral inquiry, of ontology.  But the spirit is infected with a command to fight.  The two purposes are at odds, and the incompatibility is ripping the spirit apart. 

First, Shepard tries to erase the command.  But the urge to fight is like an oil slick that wraps around the tendrils of Shepard’s will as she attempts to reconstitute the spirit.  She cannot make the spirit over again; this kind of wisdom is too foreign to Shepard.  There isn’t enough of it in her to buttress the holes in the spirit that the command has torn.

So Shepard tries a different approach.  Reconciliation.  She finds a place in herself that knows wisdom because of the fights she has won and the wars she has lived.  Shepard has too often learned wisdom only in retrospect. There is a way to bridge the spirit and the command, and there is enough of it inside her to mend the spirit enough that it can survive. 

The green and black swirls clashing through the spirit’s physical form subside and blend into a pearlescent grey.  The spirit still has an elven woman’s form, but its eyes and skin shine like the sea after a storm. 

“Regret,” whispers Solas. 

“You still know me, falon,” says the spirit, in return, and it shines a little brighter.

Shepard squeezes Solas’ hand when she opens the rift to send the spirit back to Fade, and he holds onto her grip like a drowning man.  

* * * 

Solas should not have been surprised that Shepard located Dirthamen’s temple.  She was the center of gravity around which past and present, physical reality and the Fade all swirled.  He could imagine her slicing open a fish’s stomach to reveal gems like in a peasant’s tale, or reaching into a haystack and pulling out a legendary blade. She warped the world around her by existing in it.  Of course she would walk through the rubble of a city dead for thousands of years and discover a map to the hidden temple of the god of secrets.  It only made sense.  Dirthamen’s temple.  Yes, Shepard, perhaps we should investigate it and determine whether he left anything useful behind. 

Solas had never received an invitation, of course.  Only Dirthamen’s priests, Falon’din, and the god himself would have partaken in any rites here.   Shepard did not look impressed when they reached the water-logged ruins just after nightfall.  Solas had to admit the temple was less than impressive, even taking into account the leeches and the rashvine.  

“It’s like someone who took just one college architecture course was put in charge of designing the entire thing,” she groused.  “All the elements are fighting with each other.  See?  The ogee arches are covered in fancy carving, but the archer statues are neo-primitive.” 

Nobody ‘saw,’ but nobody disagreed with her either. 

“The murals are abstract, but this wolf is more modernist.  None of it goes with anything else,” she concluded, hands on hips in front of a large statue of the Proud Wolf.  A nice touch, Dirthamen, Solas thought.  I did not think you cared. 

Dirthamen probably had not cared, though.  The man had been almost reptilian in his disregard for most of the activities of others. The hapless architect of this temple- and Solas shared Shepard’s assessment of his skill- had likely just been afraid to omit one of the Evanuris. 

“Anybody know what’s the deal with the wolf?” Shepard asked, looking back at her teammates.

Solas bit his tongue. 

“Some kind of ancient elven bogeyman,” Varric said, peering at the statue.  “My Dalish friend in Kirkwall used to swear by him. Fen’Harel.  The Dread Wolf.  He was their god of betrayal and bad stuff, generally.” 

Shepard cut her eyes over to Solas to confirm.  He bit down harder, tasted blood.  

“The legends are inconclusive,” he finally managed.  “As with all such things, his role likely mutated over time.  The elves of the Dales, for instance, saw wolves as protectors and guardians.”

Shepard engaged her omni-tool, scanned the statue. 

“If he’s the bad guy god, maybe there are weapons caches with his statues,” she explained.  

“What kind of weapons do you expect, Inquisitor?” Cassandra asked, curiously.  “It seems unwise to unravel ancient elven magics.  Such things are known to be dangerous.”

Too true, Seeker.

Shepard abandoned the wolf statue and started off sloshing through the rest of the temple using her omni-tool to light her way. 

“Don’t wince when you hear this, guys, but I’ve been doing some thinking.  I think the first colonists set themselves up as gods,” she explained.  “I’ve seen it happen before.  We had a saying, back on Earth, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

“Makes sense,” Varric said, rubbing his stubble. 

It made Solas a little lightheaded, to hear it spoken out loud in so simple a fashion. 

“Anyway, it seems like Corypheus is looking for ancient elven ruins.  Makes me think there’s something to find.  Not to mention, if there’s any good tech lying around to salvage, I’d be happy to have it myself,” Shepard said. 

Dirthamen’s temple revealed a small, sad tale of small, sad lives ended after the Veil rose and cut off the priests’ access to their god. 

“These guys were really up on themselves for knowing something we don’t, huh,” said Varric. 

Cassandra smiled at him, miracle of miracles. 

“Not even a hint of what about, though,” she said.

“He wouldn’t be a very good god of secrets if it were easy to guess them,” Solas pointed out. 

They grimly slogged through the vines and bugs and demons, gathering desiccated bits of the former high priest. 

That man, Solas remembered. Eladis.  An unpleasant, nearsighted individual with bad breath and the unwelcome habit of drawing near to his conversational partners so that he could observe their faces.  Not frequently invited to the best parties. 

“You know what will happen when you complete the ritual,” Solas murmured in Shepard’s ear.

“Yeah, some freakish monster will appear and we’ll have to dispatch it,” Shepard acknowledged. 

Solas looked at the ritual chamber door sealed by the high priest. 

“Why are you bothering with it, then?” he asked, tilting his head meaningfully at her wrist.

It only took her a moment.  

“Oh, right,” she said sheepishly, dropping Eladis’ hands into the murky water and engaging her omni-tool.

A few moments of whirling colors and the doors flashed blue and cracked open.  

Whatever he or Shepard had been expecting, the treasure chamber was not it.

“Trash,” Varric concluded after surveying the smashed containers within.  

“There’s a shield,” Cassandra said.  “That could be…useful.” 

“Is it really?” Shepard asked, skeptically. 

Cassandra made a face and dropped it with a 'clang.'

“No,” she admitted. “We have better.”

Shepard let out a rush of breath in frustration, looking at the floor.

“Why go to all this effort to guard a few minor relics,” she said, frowning.

She tapped her foot as she scanned the ritual chamber a final time.   Then she lifted her wrist again and looked into her omni-tool. 

“Let me just take a look at the map,” she said, talking to herself more than anyone else.  She projected the layout of the temple, turned it a few times in the air. 

“There,” she said, pointing her finger at a black space just off of the ritual chamber.  “What was right there?” she asked the group.

“Nothing,” said Cassandra, confused.

“Exactly!” Shepard said. “They may have had this world’s worst architect build this place, but nobody builds a room with no entrances or exits in the middle of a temple for no reason.”  

They went back through the temple and closely examined the walls that bordered the empty space on Shepard’s map.  There was no obvious trick door- no movable torch, no filigree stonework to conceal a hinge.  Each of them ran their hands over the damp stone, feeling for a catch or a seam. Nothing. 

“What does your omni-tool say is behind the wall?” Solas asked Shepard.  

She scanned it slowly, letting the triangular field touch the entire space. 

“Nothing,” she said. “Which means it’s something.  The scanner can’t penetrate past the stone. There must be a stasis field right behind it.” 

Her tone was excited, energetic. 

“Whatever is in there, it would be preserved from whenever the stasis field was put in place,” she told him.

Anticipation and dread warred within him.  Dirthamen had certainly observed the transformation of Solas into Fen’Harel. His agents would have had no way to scour the temple of the god of secrets to destroy any evidence of his identity.  But Dirthamen’s secrets were worth the risk. 

“Use your mark,” he told Shepard.  “If it is ancient elven magic, it must draw upon the Fade.  You should be able to drain it as you would a rift.”

She smiled at him gratefully.  “I knew you were more than decorative,” she joked.

Mythal had once said something very similar, after he trapped and executed a band of spies sent by the Forgotten Ones to her lands.  His smile curdled slightly.

“Stand back, everyone,” she said, lifting her palm to the wall.

They didn’t scatter out of the way fast enough, and Solas had to throw up a hasty barrier to keep Varric from being decapitated by a piece of flying masonry.  But before he could scold Shepard, he got a look at what was inside the hidden chamber.

It was hard to see, since it was completely dark, but the ambient light of the stars and the reflection of Shepard’s still-glowing mark against smooth, gleaming metal and polished plastic surfaces.

“A lab,” Shepard breathed, gazing wide-eyed at the pristine devices filling a space as large as the Skyhold main hall. 

“Dirthamen, you utter bastard,” Solas muttered, in Elvhen.  

Cassandra and Varric hung back behind Solas’ cautioning arm.  He let Shepard explore the area on her own, first.  None of them had any experience with the machines, which were nonetheless obviously familiar to Shepard.  He knew she would tell him what she had found.  There were things about herself she had not told him- important things- but she did not hide anything from him about his world.  He did not fear she would keep Dirthamen’s secrets from him. 

Shepard had her scanner out, and was periodically making noises of both surprise and pleasure until she came to one device towards the solid wall of the back of the room. 

“Motherfuckers!” she yelled, startling the rest of them, and bringing Solas to her side.  

At his concerned face, she gestured at a yellow symbol at the bottom of a screen of transparent glass. Her nostrils were flared, and a muscle along her jaw tensed in strain.  Anger and fear both, he thought.

“What is it,” he said, pitching his voice not to carry back to Cassandra and Varric, in case it meant something dire for the Inquisition.

When she told him what the little hexagon flanked by crooked arms meant, he had to smooth his face to keep his knowledge from showing.  Glyph had told him that name.

“Fucking Cerberus,” Shepard snarled.  “They brought fucking Cerberus with them to Andromeda.” 

Chapter Text

Cullen’s misgivings about travel to the Exalted Plains were exacerbated by the heat.  His headaches as well.  The plains were baking in the late summer heat; the passing armies had cut down large swathes of the timberlands to fuel their campfires, eliminate hiding spots for ambushes, and clear the way for troops to march in formation. Which was the kind of idiotic thing Orlesians did. Bereft of trees, the plains baked, as did Cullen and his guard. 

He feared that in the heat and confusion of the battlefield, his troops would respond to provocations by either Celene or Gaspard’s forces, tipping the delicate balance that currently held the fighting in abeyance, and forcing the Inquisition’s hand to one side or another.  So he held discipline in his hands like a choking rein, and his men were starting to resent him for it. 

He still did not agree with Josephine and Leliana’s decision to send him after the Inquisitor, to boot.  

Shepard’s initial report of her findings at Dirthamen’s temple was hard enough to understand. Subsequent missives had failed to make clear what, exactly, she had found.  Moreover, she had demanded the attendance of everyone in the Inquisition with the ability to explain whatever lost technology she had found to the War Council.  Bianca and Dagna had left immediately. Varric and Hawke had never returned.  Dorian and Madame Vivienne were supervising the transport to Val Royeaux of various pieces of equipment.  The Chargers were providing perimeter security.  Even Sera and Cassandra had deserted Skyhold for the Exalted Plains, though what they were doing for the Inquisitor, he was not sure.

“Cullen, you should take a unit of Inquisition guards down to the Exalted Plains and find out what the Inquisitor’s plan is to defeat Corypheus,” Leliana had announced one morning, seconded immediately by Josephine. 

“Have you not asked her that in your last three letters?” Cullen pointed out.

“Certainly, but she has not responded,” Leliana replied.  “You should go and ask her yourself.  She likes you.”

“No more than either of you,” Cullen said, suppressing a blush.   Was he fifteen again? 

“She trusts you,” Josephine had urged him, fluttering her eyelashes in a way that had resolved many a trade dispute.  Cullen steeled himself against it.  He did not want to leave Skyhold and the many unfinished projects he was overseeing. Especially not in the height of summer. 

“She does not. At most, she does not believe I am clever enough to manipulate her,” he protested.  

“Precisely, Commander,” Leliana replied, clapping him on the arm.  “I knew you would see it was for the best that you go.” 

Facing the two of them as a united front, Cullen had acquiesced. 

He was fortunate enough to avoid conflict with any of the Orlesian forces before he encountered the Chargers. 

Krem was in high spirits, waving at Cullen from his high ground on the outskirts of the temple ruins. He did not seem to be suffering at all from the heat, and Cullen recalled that Minrathous was reported to endure these conditions year-round.

“Good to see you, Commander!” the Tevinter called to him, after Cullen had gotten his troops situated and staking up their camp.  “How is Skyhold?”

“Quiet,” Cullen reported, approaching him.  “The bartender has been grumbling about lack of patronage.  The minstrel, too.” 

“Oh?” Krem asked, rubbing his chin to hide a blush.  “Did Maryden…say something about me- us?” 

Upon closer inspection, Krem was sporting the downy golden-brown start of a mustache on his upper lip.  Cullen was surprised- he had had to perform some quick surgery on the mental categories within which he had sorted people after meeting the mercenary.  He had not thought that Krem’s category extended to either the facial hair or increased musculature the Tevinter was showing off in the sleeveless tunic he wore to counter the late-afternoon sun.

Krem caught him staring, and they both looked away in embarrassment. 

“That’s, uh, the Inquisitor is turning out medicine from one of the big metal boxes she found,” Krem told him awkwardly.  “She stuck a pin in my arm.  So nobody would doubt that I’m, you know…” 

“I didn’t doubt you were a man,” Cullen told him softly.  “But the mustache looks good on you.” 

Krem rewarded him with an upward quirk of his lips.  “I still need to find a mirror out here, but the boys tell me I’m looking good.” 

Cullen cleared his throat, hoping to change the subject to an area on which he could tread less cautiously. 

“Anything else interesting come out of the temple?” Cullen asked.  

“Not in a few days,” Krem reported.  “But Shepard keeps the Chargers out of the temple proper.  Just the dwarven ladies and her elf, sir.  She said it’s not safe.”

“Have you seen the Inquisitor, then?” Cullen asked, somewhat concerned that Shepard had isolated herself with Bianca, Dagna, and Solas.  None of those three were what Cullen considered reliable boosters for the Inquisition. 

“Oh sure,” Krem said. “She comes out for meals, and her tent is over there.  It’s pretty muggy down in the temple, from what I understand.  You’ll want to put on some bug spray if that’s where you’re headed.”

“Bug…spray?”  Cullen asked.

“Great stuff,” Krem reported.  “Shepard made it down in the temple.  You sprinkle it on, and the little biting guys leave you alone.  Smells like lemon, too.”

A new small wonder, every single day, Cullen thought.  His Da would sure appreciate that come harvest time, if Cullen could get some to him. When had he last written? Perhaps Shepard was not the only poor correspondent.  

After the Chargers doused him in ‘bug spray,’ Cullen approached the central building in the elven ruins.  The bugs were indeed swarming in the golden sunlight, and although he occasionally walked through clouds of gnats, the biting flies did seem to have relented. 

There were a few signs that the temple was being excavated: the ground was packed hard and firm, free of plants, and there were ruts of cart tracks in the dirt.  Cullen was, in fact, looking at the earth when he heard two loud ‘cracks,’ like tree branches snapping under ice, while simultaneously the ground before him exploded in puffs of dirt.  He careened back a few feet, struggling to stay upright, eyes darting around the courtyard to find the threat.

He found the threats easily, alright- Hawke, Sera, and Varric were standing on the roof of the Temple, directly above the entrance.

Hawke and Sera were doubled over in laughter.  Varric looked sheepish.  All were armed with rifles- black ones, shorter than the one Leliana had confiscated in Val Royeaux, but unmistakably the same kind of weapon.  

“What are you doing?” Cullen roared at them, once he found his footing.  “Are you trying to kill me?” 

“Sorry, Curly!” Varric called down, faintly.  “Warning shot.” 

“Your face!” Sera said, undeterred.  “It was like….you know, when you step on a cat’s tail and it goes hissssssss!”

Hawke was still too choked with glee to say anything. 

 Cullen ran both of his hands through his hair and clamped his jaws shut over what he wanted to say to the three of them.  This conversation with Shepard was going to be hard enough without coming fresh off of a fight with other members of the Inquisition. 

“You need to be careful with those,” he said, attempting a measured tone.  

“I was,” Sera protested. “Carefully shooting at the ground in front of your feet.  To make it blow up, and make your face like your face was.  Ha!” 

“We’re very good with them, Knight-Commander,” Hawke told him, still giggling.  “There’s nothing to do out here but practice.” 

“Hawke,” Cullen sighed. “You were the most dangerous apostate in the Free Marches.  And your apostate friend blew up the Chantry. Why do you need a gun?” 

“Aw, Knight-Commander,” Hawke said, putting her hands on her hips.  Her blouse was unlaced so low he could see the top of the scar where she’d been impaled by the Arishok.  “You’re flirting with me.  I didn’t know you cared!”  

“Why, Hawke,” Cullen asked, refusing to be distracted. 

“Inquisitor told us to keep everyone out of the temple,” Varric told him, finally.  “And Chuckles said not to use magic. He hasn’t finished cataloging everything they found down there, and he doesn’t know if it might be ‘magically volatile,’ whatever that is.” 

“Right,” said Cullen. “Well, thanks for the warning, anyway.” He took a step forward.  

“Hey hey!” Sera yelled. “Not in! Out, she said.” 

“They’re researching dangerous stuff down there,” Varric warned him.  “Red lyrium or something worse.  You should stay out, talk to Dollface when she comes out for dinner.” 

“What are you going to do, shoot me?” Cullen asked, walking to the entrance.  His shoulders itched, but Hawke did not see fit to stop him using lethal force. 

“If you turn into a statue like Meredith did, try to be striking a heroic poke when you do!” Hawke’s voiced carried after him as he ducked through the tarp covering the doorway.  

Inside the temple, someone (likely the three he had just evaded) had covered the walls in a series of pictograms depicting stick figures dying a variety of grisly deaths. Impaled.  Beheaded.  Falling into pits of spikes.  “DON’T” was written on the ground in foot-high block letters.  He suspected that one was Varric, based on some of the pamphlets the dwarf had distributed in Kirkwall taverns.

The temple was dirty and buggy, but he didn’t see anything to be alarmed about.  Wandering blindly eventually led him to a central chamber, from which he could see light pouring through a large opening from a smaller room.

“Hello?” he called, approaching cautiously. 

“Commander Cullen?” Dagna asked, poking her head out.  “Commander Cullen!”  She bustled out and impulsively threw her arms around his midsection. 

“Oh,” Cullen squeaked out. The young arcanist was, for opaque reasons, very fond of him.  He could barely remember their overlapping months in the Fereldan Circle, as that time was a hazy, tender sink of bad memories, but he had apparently found it in him to be hospitable to her when many of his peers had not.  He patted her gently on the shoulder. 

Over her head, he could see Bianca watching them curiously.   She had some kind of multiple-lensed goggles perched atop her perfect blonde coif, and was surrounded by stacks of papers, machinery, and tools of all sorts.

Beyond her, it took Cullen a moment to recognize Solas.  The elf was now crowned with short, chestnut hair sticking up from his scalp in sweaty spikes.  The sides of his head were still shaved bare, but not so closely.  The combination of the unfamiliar haircut and the level stare the man was sending Cullen’s way made the calcified part of his brain that was always looking for threats rattle about and shriek of apostate, apostate, danger. 

They locked eyes, and Solas nodded gravely, then turned back to his work, which seemed to consist of manipulating glowing panes of orange and green light in the air. 

Although crates of equipment had arrived at Skyhold, the room was still cluttered with machines made of metal, plastic, and glass.  Cullen did not recognize the balls of light affixed to the walls; they did not resemble the ‘bulbs’ Bianca had installed around Skyhold before her departure for the Exalted Plains. 

He had to walk a few steps into the room before he saw Shepard: she was halfway inside one of the machines, and judging by her bottom half, barely dressed.  

He was saved from having to clear his throat, or call her name, or do something idiotic and terrible like he did whenever they spoke, because she was already backing out of the gears or whatever were inside of the machine.  

“Debugging was a success,” she said, without turning around.  She held a large brown moth between her thumb and forefinger.  “I think this guy might be older than everyone else in this room…Cullen?” 

She had her hair pulled back from her face and piled into a bun on top of her head.  She was wearing some kind of stretchy black material, but it formed only a kind of breastband with straps over her shoulders and a pair of undergarments extending down to her knees.  He bit the inside of his cheek so hard that he tasted copper, willing the sudden rush of heat to his groin to subside.  Yes, he was definitely not feeling his years today. 

“Inquisitor,” he said, hiding his discomfort with a formal bow.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.  “I didn’t know you were coming…” 

“…because you have not been reading your correspondence from the War Council,” he said.  She looked guiltily over at a stack of papers which were partially obscured by a pile of discarded clothing. 

That seemed to jog her realization at her state of dress.  She looked down her body.  Cullen did too, then jerked his head away.

“Sorry,” she muttered, scuttling over to her clothes.  “It’s hot as hell in here, and we used to wear a lot less in the way of cover in the tropics.”  

“Nobody minds, I’m sure,” Cullen said stiffly.  He couldn’t quite decipher the face the elf made at him, but he didn’t think it was a good one. 

Shepard pulled on a shirt, but did nothing to cover her long, muscular legs. 

Better to get this over with quickly, then.

“Inquisitor, the War Council needs direction.  We have assets that are sitting idle and need to be deployed.  Writs are awaiting your signature.  Petitions.  Contracts. You must return to Skyhold,” he said. He had practiced that bit. 

“Of course,” Shepard said. “As soon as I’m done here, I’ll return to Skyhold.”

“Inquisitor, you are needed now,” he protested.  “You have been here for weeks, and while of course we appreciate your new devices, what is this doing to stop Corypheus?  Or the civil war?”

Shepard rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead, leaving a long streak of grey grime.  Now that Cullen could focus on her face, he saw that she had deep purple circles under her eyes.  She looked tired. 

“This may not be yielding immediate results, but you have several hundred years of hitting each other with sharp things ahead of each you, by my estimation, regardless of whether or not I intervene to stop this particular war,” Shepard said softly.

“So you don’t intend to deal with the civil war?  And you want me to tell the Inquisition troops, what, that their lives don’t matter? Their families don’t deserve to be safe?” he asked her, frustrated. 

“Of course they do, Cullen,” Shepard snapped at him, annoyed.  She stalked across the room, picked up a clear bottle full of water, gulped down half of it.  “They all deserve better.  Look here at this.”

She gestured him over to a wall of the chamber, where someone had painted the stone black to form a kind of a chalkboard.  There were a number of lines and symbols written on it in chalk, but not in a language Cullen could read.  

“Let me walk you through this,” she said, and started to explain her theory connecting the Reapers, some kind of thinking machines who could control the minds of their followers, to Cerberus, which had attempted to harness Reaper technology for the benefit of their human-supremacist followers, to the Andromeda colonists, who had created the races of Thedas, to red lyrium, which demonstrated many of the same characteristics as Reaper artifacts, to the Blight, which Bianca had linked to red lyrium. 

Cullen rubbed the furrows in his forehead.

“And you have found proof of all this here?” he asked. 

“Not exactly,” Shepard admitted.  “There are logs, but they’re encrypted.  This is our working hypothesis at the moment. I want to talk to someone who knows more about the elven gods than Solas does, and maybe study a Grey Warden to see if the darkspawn taint matches up with what I know about Reaper influence.” 

“Inquisitor…” Cullen started.

“I know,” she said, cutting him off.  She sat down on a crate and brushed back tendrils of the hair which had escaped her updo.  “I’m working as hard as I can.  I can’t fix everything at once.  I don’t even know if I can fix everything.  We never did find a cure for Reaper indoctrination back in the Milky Way, other than shooting someone in the head.” 

“Inquisitor,” Cullen said more firmly.  “You do not have to fix every problem in Thedas from the Blight to the oppression of the elves.  You’ve already resolved the mage-Templar conflict and the Breach.  The War Council would like you to look at the Orlesian succession, and of course prepare for the next confrontation with Corypheus.  But if you are correct, these other problems have persisted for thousands of years.  They will keep.”

“You think,” Solas broke in, unimpressed. 

Shepard silenced him with a dilatory gesture.

“I don’t know a thing about your politics, and Corypheus will come for me no matter what I do.  If we understand the way the Blight and red lyrium work on this planet, it might help us stop Corypheus,” she argued.

Cullen sighed.  “A bargain then, Inquisitor.  If I find you an expert on elven history and a Grey Warden to poke at, will you go meet with a refugee leader in the Dales?  Fairbanks is supposed to have some ideas on how to prevent the Orlesian civil war from claiming more lives than it already has.”

Shepard’s eyebrows lifted. “Well, that sounds fair.”

Cullen nodded in agreement.  His headache started to pound more fiercely.  He resolved to talk with Hawke about getting her brother and his blood-mage lover down to Skyhold before he had the time to really dread the discussion. 

“Take some aspirin for your headache, Commander!” Dagna chirped at him after he said his farewells and took his leave.  “It really works miracles.”

After a few dead ends, Cullen found his way out of the temple.  He didn’t feel inclined to linger, but he knew his men would not appreciate marching straight back to Skyhold just after arriving.  He would have to spend the night. 

 He found Cassandra seated on a rough bench in the main camp, squinting over a sheaf of bound papers on a lap desk in the light of the setting sun.  She was, at least, looking well.

“Commander,” she nodded at him when he approached.

“Good evening, Cassandra,” he said, finally getting off his feet and taking a seat next to her. 

He tried to look over her shoulder without being too obnoxious about it, but she caught him and gave him a teasing smile. 

“You will regret spying if you read this, Cullen.  It is dry as toast.”

“What is it, then?” he asked, curious.

“Shepard gave me a copy of her Alliance’s code of military justice.  I am making notes where I think it could be adapted for the Seekers and the Templars.”

“Do you really think there will be Seekers or Templars when this is all over?” Cullen asked, resigned.  

“The Inquisitor does,” Cassandra said firmly.  “As long as there is dangerous magic in this world, Templars will be needed, and Seekers too.  They might not resemble the orders we knew, but perhaps that is for the best.” 

Cullen grimaced, and shut his eyes.  “You are so much more hopeful about this than I am.  How do you do it, when I know you have seen so many of the same horrors repeated that I have?” 

Cassandra was quiet for a minute, idly sketching the symbol of the Inquisition in the margin of her page. Cullen almost thought she did not intend to answer him.

“Faith,” she said at last. “I have faith in the Inquisitor. Faith in the people who have joined the Inquisition.  And faith, still, in Andraste’s mercy.  That she foresaw a day when Thedas would not be divided and torn by evil magic.  I have faith that the Inquisitor fulfills that vision.”

She put her hand on Cullen’s shoulder and left it there as she spoke.  Cullen stayed very still, lest she remove it.  It was the most solid thing he had felt in weeks.  They sat there quietly together, and the sun dipped down to night. 

Chapter Text

If Shepard had been forced to rank the things she missed the most about the Milky Way, coffee would have come out on top.  Sure, there were her friends, air conditioning, the way the stars looked out a window when a spaceship turned on the FTL drive…but coffee was the one simple pleasure she’d never done without for a protracted period of time before crashing on Thedas. 

She hadn’t known they even had coffee here until she followed her nose to a boiling pot over the campfire of three of Leliana’s forward scouts in the Emerald Graves. 

“Is that coffee?” she asked, sniffing the air and making the scouts jump into ready position. 

“Yes ma’am,” stuttered one of them.  “We have the first and last watch tonight, since Jasper and Daoud are still sick with the flux, sooo…”  he trailed off, not understanding why Shepard was staring at the little copper boiler with such fascination.

“Yes, coffee is always good before a watch, but where did you get it?” Shepard asked, gaze still avid.

“Cumberland, Your Holiness,” said another scout, in an accent resembling Josephine’s.  “It’s all grown in Antiva, but I like the roast they put on it in Cumberland.  Would you like a cup?” 

Antiva?  Josephine had known there was coffee the entire time Shepard had been on Thedas?  Shepard wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to forgive her. 

Shepard reached into the belt pouch of her armor. 

“I’ll give you all the gold I have and take your watches for you if you’ll sell me the coffee and the pot.”

Solas found her shortly before sunset, sipping her second cup.  The terrified scouts had bargained her down to none of their watches and half her gold.  Her implants would metabolize the effects of the caffeine within a few minutes, but the taste brought her back to her first days in the Alliance.  Alliance coffee, unlike almost all other rations, was pretty good. Better than the coarse-ground, freeze-dried bricks of the stuff she’d grown up with on Mindoir.  This coffee was close to the taste she remembered, for all it had been boiled over an open fire. 

“Do I need to duel whoever put that look on your face for your affections?” Solas asked, joining her on a ruined piece of foundation encircling their hilltop position.  

“Mmm,” Shepard sighed, taking another sip.  “I’d like to think that you and coffee could come to some kind of an arrangement, but if not….I’ll miss you.” 

“I’ll keep my relative rank in mind, then,” Solas said, smiling at her.  She smiled back over the lip of her tin cup.

“Care to take a walk with me?  I saw some landmarks of note not far from camp, and we should have an hour or more of light left,” Solas told her. 

Shepard pushed herself off her seat.  “Is that like looking at your etchings? Because you really don’t have to try that hard with me,” she said.

He smirked, giving her a warm look through dark eyelashes that rarely failed with her.  “Duly noted.  But I would like to look at the monuments.  First.” 

“First,” she agreed, following him away from camp.

She had enjoyed the last few weeks in the forest; the skyscraping trees were breathtaking, of course, and resettling Fairbanks’ refugees was satisfying, but now that she had a reasonable approximation of a Kassa X Armageddon back on her hip, she no longer feared the Red Templars.  Moreover, fighting at range meant she no longer ended every battle covered in the guts of her adversaries. The physical distance from her opponents helped psychological distance.

Solas was pleasantly rambling about the history of the Dales before the Exalted Marches, pointing out bits of ruins and statuary that dated from the time of the elven regime.

“Not a lot of people live out here,” Shepard noted.  “Or in the Exalted Plains, either.”

“Certainly the civil war has caused many of the inhabitants to flee,” Solas noted.  “But the Dales have a low human population. Most of the lands were carved into great estates for absent Orlesian nobles to command. Even Halamshiral, the former Dalish capital, has only a small human upper class.  This area was never truly settled.” 

“Hmmm,” Shepard said thoughtfully.  “If the elves were given their homeland back, how many would choose to return?” 

Solas looked at her sharply. “Is that something you are considering? The restoration of the Dales?”  

Shepard shrugged. “Among other things.  Again, we’ll probably want some real colony administrators to take a look at it someday.  But it’s an obvious solution.  If the humans insist on treating the elves in their cities as second-class citizens, let them vote with their feet and come settle this area. Obviously, we’d have to take some care that history didn’t repeat itself.  The elves need to have diplomatic relations with their neighbors. But it might make a good interim solution while the world is industrializing.”

“It is a better idea than most I have considered,” Solas admitted.  “Though the elves are so varied now.  It is hard to imagine Dalish elves giving up their travels to live among alienage elves and the escapees of Chantry circles. 

“It’s not that hard to imagine when you’ve seen volus and elcor roommates,” Shepard told him, thinking of her first visit to the Citadel embassies.  “But what about you? Do you think you could ever learn to fit in in a new elven nation?” 

Solas looked around him, taking in the ruins, the shuttered chateaux, the rams grazing on the hills. 

“I always thought that would be the only place I could possibly make a home in,” he said slowly. “But I find it harder and harder to imagine a world without humans.  Without dwarves.  Without Qunari, even, if Bull is an example of what his people can become.  And I find I…”  his expression as slightly pained, as though these admissions were unwilling.   He hesitated. 

“Well, obviously we can’t kick out the people already living here,” Shepard said smoothly.  “And I just claimed that hill over there for my beet farm.” 

He squinted at her, not certain whether she was joking.  “A beet farm,” he repeated. 

Shepard lifted her hands and used her thumbs and forefingers as a frame.  She pretended to snap a picture of the next hill over, crowned by a giant stone wolf. 

 “My parents grew beets. It’s good honest work.  And honestly, the Alliance pension has always been crap, even if I get back pay for solving this red lyrium business for them.  We’ll need to earn a living somehow if you want to continue your work as ‘Fade scholar.’  I have yet to figure out who pays for that.”

“You do,” he reminded her. “And did you say ‘we’?”

“Is there another hill you liked better?” Shepard asked, more easily than she might have felt, suddenly nervous for his reaction.  “That one comes with its own giant wolf statue, you know, so there’s no need to decorate or landscape.  We’ll plunk a couple of prefab housing units down, run pipe to the stream, set the generators up over there…” Solas cut off her rambling with his lips, nipping her mouth firmly.

“I would have to see the view from over there first,” he said.  “If we’re choosing hills right now, we should make sure we get the best one.” 

“By all means,” Shepard said, lifting her eyebrows and gesturing towards the statue.

The sun was nearly down by the time they reached it.  With a casual gesture, Solas lit the torches around the reclining wolf’s statue.  Even with the light in their eyes, it was clear that the spot offered views of the treetops for miles.  

“I agree,” Solas said, after a few minutes of surveying the horizon. 

“Best hill?” Shepard asked, unsure of his meaning. 

“Yes,” he said, still looking out into the growing dark.  “If you restore an elven nation in the Dales, we’ll build our house right here. I’ll help you with your industrial plans.  I think you’ll be too busy for beets, but if you want a garden, I would be honored to help plant it.”  

Shepard felt that little dip in her stomach that she associated with stepping into zero-g. The buzz along her skin that started when artificial gravity ended.  She tried to fix her features into the shape of her self-deprecating smile, but when she stole a glance at Solas, his face was serious. 

She thought she might have just gotten engaged, or something similar, and she wasn’t certain what to say, so she just took his hand in hers and held it tightly. 

Before they returned to camp, he ended up backing her up against the granite monument.  She helped support her own weight by gripping the base of the statute with her arms both extended.  Solas used one arm to hold her leg over his hip while he leaned forward and braced against the stone wolf with his other hand. 

When he kissed her, it was almost hard enough to bruise her lips, and his tongue moved aggressively into her mouth.  His breath was hot against her face, and his long eyelashes brushed her cheekbones.  

Shepard wasn’t certain why this, of all nights, was the one he let his control slip, but she welcomed the sharp snap of his hips against hers, and the slight burn when he entered her hastily.  She didn’t bother to chase it, just enjoyed the dark velvet of the night and the heat of Solas’ body against hers, the way his breath caught when he pushed as deeply inside her as he could before shuddering, mouth dipping to the pulse of her neck.

“Ar lath ma,” he whispered. She knew what that meant now. 

“I love you too,” she said, for the first time in her adult life.

 * * * 

Solas had not meant to enter the Fade that night.  Caught under Shepard’s arm, with her light breathing against the nape of his neck, he had resolved to simply enjoy the rest of the evening.  There was no need to look up the past of this patch of the Dales. And he could not see its future from the Fade. 

When he found his consciousness lifted from the tent he shared with Shepard to a deserted wooden hall hung with colorful silk tapestries, he searched for the source of his transportation. 

“I did not think we had anything left to say to each other,” he told Mythal, finding her seated on a chair that blurred the line between ‘bench’ and ‘throne’ at the other end of the room.  

She gave him a languid smile, folding her hands in her lap.  “You have grown so inconstant, old wolf.  I thought you were angry with me because I had not spoken with you often enough.” 

“A certain quantity of discussions was of no benefit,” he snarled, looking to leave. 

“You do not even care to hear what I have to say?” Mythal teased him as he turned to go.

“Why should I?” Solas told her.  “If you had plans, they have obviously failed.  As you said the last time, I serve a new mistress now.  Leave us be.” 

“My plans?” Mythal said, incredulously.  She rose from her seat and walked toward him.  “When were my plans ever consulted?  I spent my many years trying to correct the mistakes of the idiot men in my life, and what have I gained for it?  I died in betrayal, lost my children, saw my world perish in fire and ruin, and now you say that I planned this?” 

“If you think your quiet complicity is an excuse, you have not been paying me much attention,” he told her, eyes half-lidded in threat.  “I know about Cerberus.  About the Reapers.  About the modifications.” 

“And you will hang it all on my neck, because it is most convenient,” Mythal told him.  She spread her arms.  “Was it all so wrong?  Until a month ago, all you wanted was to restore my works.”  

“They were rotten from within,” Solas told her.  “Riddled with an evil you should have known better than to bring with you.  You didn’t need to control your people to build your new world.  That was your choice.”

“It was not my choice,” Mythal said. “That was Ephraim’s choice.  And Gillian’s.  Once it was done, we had no choice but to oppose them.  If we had won the war…”

“You cannot win a war armed only with your enemy’s weapon’s,” Solas said sadly.  “You should have told us. Told me. I would have helped you.  We could have contacted the Andromeda Initiative.  Found someone like Shepard…”

“Someone like Shepard?” Mythal said, eyes furious.  “Someone like Shepard, who killed thousands.  Millions!  Where do you think she learned what she knows?  Who brought her back to life?  Whose machinery is pumping her blood, lighting up her eyes?  Cerberus!” 

Solas clenched his hands into fists.  “She is the only chance we have to save our people.  All the people.  Everyone’s people.”

Mythal laughed at him. “She thinks it is so simple to solve?  Well, she is welcome to try.  But we know a few things she does not, is that not right, Fen’Harel.”

The blood froze in his veins, congealed with fear. 

“You would not,” he breathed. 

“Wouldn’t I?” Mythal said, picking at an imaginary speck of rust on her gauntlets.  “Well no, I would not.  But here is a thing I know.  No signal has left this planet since I finally made landfall.  And before Oliver burned the ships, none was received. Nobody was looking for us.  Nobody sent Shepard here.”

Solas frowned, thinking through that. 

“She hardly believes that Andraste delivered her to us,” he said. 

“Was that her only concern?” Mythal said casually.  “Well then, I suppose I will be proven wrong.” 

Suddenly tired of fighting with the All-Mother, Solas turned again to leave, to find some quiet place to slip back into true sleep. 

“Take a care, Dread Wolf,” Mythal called after him in farewell.  “The Crossroads grow crowded these days, many with your name on their lips. Take a care that your mistress does not grow jealous at how many call it out.”

Chapter Text

“I can dance,” Shepard offered, when her War Council commenced preparations for peace talks with the powers of Orlais.   Her expression was grim, her jaw was clenched- Varric had seen her face down demon hordes with less consternation.  Actually, Shepard could get downright cheerful when culling the local monster population. But she looked like she’d been condemned to hard labor when Josephine showed up with her little gilt-edged notecards.   And, as it turned out, she couldn’t dance. 

Cullen might have been her natural dance partner- Josephine played the pianoforte beautifully, and Leliana called the steps while peppering Shepard with questions about the names and motivations of the likely attendees- but the soft-hearted Josephine had taken pity on the man when he turned red, then white, then begged off the task.  So Cassandra was the one whose toes bore the brunt of Shepard’s failure to recall the turn at the end of every minuet three-step. 

The Seeker’s toes could take it, Varric imagined.  She was still wearing mailed boots.  And it was downright amusing watching Shepard and Cassandra struggle for the lead across the dance floor as Leliana struggled to maintain an impassive face. 

It was obvious that Shepard was not on board with the War Council’s plan to shore up the Orlesian throne, whether under Celene’s ass or Gaspard’s.  Varric idly wondered what the world would make of Shepard’s casual suggestions to put Sera or Bianca in charge of the country instead.  “We just skip straight through the bloody revolution part and give the proletariat or the bourgeoisie their chance on top without any of the trouble of killing off the nobility,” she explained, to three people who were not buying what Shepard was selling. 

“Why don’t you want to go to the ball?” Josephine asked mildly, while Leliana yanked on thick chunks of her own hair. “I have ordered a lovely dress for you.  All gold brocade and lace….”

“No dress,” Shepard sighed, conceding defeat on only one front.  “My dress blues were always good enough before.  Can’t I wear something like a uniform?” 

“Er, I will see what I can do,” Josephine said, clearly disappointed, looking across the room at Varric as though she expected him to support her.  He lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.  He’d only agreed to come to the meeting because he knew some of the players in the Game from his contacts in the Merchants Guild. He hadn’t agreed to go all in on the superiority of a hereditary monarchy as a method of governance, of diplomacy over conflict, or dresses over pants.  He didn’t think he’d ever seen Hawke in a dress, and with the way a pair of leather trousers hugged her rounded behind, he didn’t care if he ever did. 

Varric scratched his stubble.  

“You don’t need figure it all out at this party, Inquisitor,” he said at last.  “It’s a tricky problem, and I don’t think Ruffles thinks she’s got it all figured out forever.  She just wants you to go play nice and shore up someone who can keep the country together long enough to bust up Corypheus.”

“How exactly does giving my support to either a genocidal bitch, a power-hungry warlord, or a assassin spymaster help keep things together?  No offense on the assassin spymaster bit, Leliana,” Shepard said.  

“None taken,” Leliana said. Ruffles made more pleading eyes at him. Andraste’s tits.  Ruffles’ eyelashes should be counted among the Inquisition’s most fearsome weapons.  Varric gave in. 

“It’s like this. Three years ago, people pretty much knew what they had to do.  The mages listened to the First Enchanter.  The Seekers listened to the Lord Seeker.  The Templars listened to the Knight-Vigilant.  The Chantry listened to the Divine.  And the Orlesian army listened to Empress Celene. Now?  Everyone but Celene is dead.  Nobody knows what to do anymore.  That’s why a big glowy red guy has managed to stomp around the empire without anyone stopping him.  Someone else has to be in charge.  You can’t just run everything through the Inquisition,” Varric said. 

“Why not?” Shepard said. 

“Well, for one because you’re not going to be running the Inquisition forever, right?” Varric asked, head cocked. 

Shepard actually smiled at that.  “Well, the position has its perks.  And this planet is growing on me.  Maybe I’ll stick around.  I’m not a lot closer to figuring out the red lyrium business.”

“Oh yeah,” Varric said, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Daisy and Junior are supposed to be here today.   I should go roll out the welcome mat.  Let me know what she says about her gods maybe starting the Blight.”

 * * * 

Hawke was thrilled to see Merrill.  Appropriately pleased to see her brother. Perfectly willing to give him a warm-ish nod of acknowledgement in familial due. But thrilled to see Merrill.

They threw their arms around each other’s necks and squealed in joy.  It had been a long three years since Hawke had seen the cutest little blood mage in all of Thedas.  Merrill barely looked older.  Carver had a few threads of grey starting to show at his temples, and some new lines around his mouth (too much glowering), but Merrill was the same as she always had been.

Except for the round bump poking Hawke in the diaphragm when they hugged.  That was decidedly new.   Hawke took a long moment to process the meaning behind that bump, staring down at it. 

Then she turned and slapped her brother across the face.  

“You asshole!” Hawke screamed. “You knocked up my Merrill!” 

Carver looked appropriately pole-axed at that, and just blinked rapidly back at her.  The room froze in place. 

After a long moment, Hawke hugged her brother for the first time since they’d both been children.

“I’m going to be an auntie,” she whispered, getting a little moist in the face.  “To a little baby Hawke.”

“Don’t be upset with him,” Merrill said cheerfully.  “I asked him to do it, after all.  We had to have quite a lot of sex before…”

“La la lah,” Hawke said, clapping her hands over her ears.  “I do not need to hear about how you debauched my baby brother.” 

Varric cleared his throat from the position in the doorway of the Skyhold main hall where he’d been watching the reunion.  “Are you changing positions on who is in the wrong here?”

“Oh, they should both be ashamed of themselves, clearly,” Hawke said.  “But let’s find Merrill a comfy chair to sit in and catch up before Shepard dismantles her entire theological system.  She’s in a delicate state, after all.”

 * * *  

Merrill took Shepard’s account of her journeys in the Fade and discoveries in Dirthamen’s temple better than Shepard might have expected. 

First, she disdained the chair Shepard offered her and plopped down cross-legged in the middle of the rug in Shepard’s office.

“It helps me to listen,” she told Shepard.  “It reminds me of when I was da’len.” 

Shepard looked at her thoughtfully.  “Do you speak old elven?” she asked. 

Merrill frowned apologetically.  “Not as much as I’d like.  Words and phrases.  A few old songs.  So much has been lost.”  She brightened.  “That’s why I was so excited to hear you found some new things.  Varric didn’t tell me what, exactly.  If I’d known the Inquisition was looking into ancient elven artifacts, I would have come immediately!” 

“So he didn’t say anything about what we found?” Shepard asked her, suddenly nervous about breaking potentially life-altering news to a woman in her condition. 

“Noooo,” Merrill said, making big eyes up at her.  “Is it something very terrible, then?”

Ooof, Shepard thought. But this was why Merrill was at Skyhold, after all.  She ran through the basics of the world she’d known and how she had come to Thedas. Then she played back the notes she’d found in the Fade, related her conversation with Melissa Cook, and explained how she had found the cache of bioengineering equipment in Dirthamen’s temple.  

“I, uh, realize this is a lot to take in at once,” Shepard said when she was done.  Merrill had her hand propped under her chin, and was starting contemplatively at the distant mountain peaks through the window.  

Shepard plucked a bundle of notes off of her desk and handed it to Merrill. 

“I wrote it all down here, so if you need time to think and go back and read through this…” Shepard trailed off. 

Merrill blinked at her. “Oh no, I’ve got it.  I was listening.”

“Oh,” Shepard said, uncomfortable. 

Merrill gave her a weak smile.  “Dalish children learn to listen.  We hardly have anything written down.  We have to remember our hahrens’ stories.  But I guess we didn’t always do that, did we?” 

“Well, it may be that nobody knew this except the colonists themselves.  They may have hidden it from their children, and the people they…cloned, I guess?” 

“Maybe,” said Merrill. “It’s not so hard to imagine, though, is it?  The Creators did make us.  Everyone here, not just elves.  That was true.  And creation isn’t always a nice story.  Something always has to be destroyed to make something new.  I’m happy to be here, anyway.  And now I have a chance to learn that the story of my people goes back so much farther than I’d ever imagined.” 

Shepard hunkered down on the floor next to her. 

“Do you think you can help me make sense of this, then?” she asked, patting her pile of notes.

“Oh, some of it, certainly,” Merrill said.  “That Oliver, who wrote the notes, sounds like what we know of Elgar’nan.   Which means that Melissa Cook must be Mythal…”

They spent the next few hours annotating Shepard’s report, until Merrill stopped and giggled, pressing her hand to her belly.

“Ooh! He kicked,” she reported.  “He must be hungry.” 

“I’m so sorry to keep you,” Shepard said, helping Merrill to her feet.  “Let’s get you both a snack.  Do you know when he’s due?”

“Well, it seems a little early to be imposing deadlines and schedules on him,” Merrill said.  “I want him to make his own decisions.”

“Obviously,” Shepard said, straight-faced.  “You already know it’s a boy?” 

“Of course,” Merrill said. “I peeked.”  

They chatted about babies- not a subject on which Shepard was much of an authority- but it sounded like Merrill was much of a novice in the area as Shepard was.

With the number of visitors to Skyhold these days (a Dalish mage and her Grey Warden companion were far from the strangest) the kitchens were full of food day and night, spilling out of the Undercroft into fields outside.  The stables had been repurposed as additional quarters and the horses relocated to foothills some leagues away in light of the rail lines beginning to spiderweb out from Skyhold to the east and west.  Shepard collected a platter of squishy rolls, dried fruit, and hard cheese and walked back up to her quarters as Merrill happily previewed names for her child. 

It was a good thing the child had a number of formidable family members ready to defend his honor and wellbeing, since any small boy burdened with a name combining elements of no fewer than five dead people dear to Merrill was likely to face a few social problems.  Poor little Maledranlenmari was going to need quite a bit of backup.

“Do the Dalish talk about the origin of the Blight?” Shepard asked. 

Merrill chewed the edge of a thumbnail contemplatively.  “No, not really.  It was after the fall of Arlathan, while we were slaves in Tevinter. We don’t really have many stories of that time,” she said. 

Shepard resisted the urge to pull Merrill’s hands from her mouth.  

“What about during the time of Arlathan?  Any stories about…mind control?  Controlling dreams?  Or turning people into monsters?”

Merrill rocked slightly back and forth as she thought.

“Not all together in one story, but perhaps.  There is a tale of Andruil hunting the Forgotten Ones beyond the void and bringing back madness and plague before Mythal stopped her.”

That did sound like the Blight, not to mention the side effects of the Reaper tech Cerberus had been developing on Chronos Station.  

“Then who are the Forgotten Ones?”  Shepard asked. 

Merrill gave an apologetic frown.  “I’m afraid the name reflects what little we know of them.  We don’t even remember all of their names.  But if they were the enemies of the Creators, and the Creators were this Oliver and Melissa, perhaps they were the other colonists you mentioned? Ephraim and Gillian?” 

“It’s a good working hypothesis,” Shepard nodded.  “But if they had a cache of Reaper tech that started the Blight, we need to find it. Where can I find out more about these Forgotten Ones?” 

Merrill tilted her head sadly.  “The Forgotten Ones did not mix with the People, but warred upon them, in our stories. The only one who could travel back and forth was Fen’Harel.” 

That name had been appearing in Leliana’s reports with greater and greater frequency.   After coming face to face in the Fade with at least two putative elven gods, Shepard was willing to bet the rest were not as trapped as the Dalish stories made them sound. 

She made herself a little sandwich of cheese, dried pear, and bread, settled herself in the armchair behind her desk. 

“Ok, Merrill, tell me all your stories about Fen’Harel.”

 * * * 

Solas sat alone in his chamber, regarding the small black box at the end of his bed as though it contained live snakes.  Or something unpleasant, instead of just dangerous.  It had been some days since he had consulted Glyph.  He was rarely alone; he slept in Shepard’s chambers, had responsibilities to the artillery team and for the safe transport of various magical and technological artifacts.  He had what he had not sought, and never expected- a life.  He had a life and a partner, not just the half-baked plans and well of vengeance that had both consumed and sustained him since Mythal’s murder.  Mythal. Melissa Cook. 

How could he be expected to pursue his vengeance when Mythal was neither dead nor the brave protector he’d crossed into the mortal realm to serve? 

He knew the genesis of spirits and demons, knew that anything he liked about himself must have had its seed in the Evanuris.  He did not need to reject everything he’d believed wholesale.  He knew his choices had been his own since he’d taken a body. But part of that burden of free will was responsibility.  He had made his choice to support Shepard.  But he made a choice every day to keep Glyph away from her.  Was it a lack of resolve on his part, or a lack of commitment? 

Unable to resolve his thoughts from the circle they ran in, he thrust the small box under his pillow and pulled his blankets over his head, seeking the Fade. 

Spirits were thicker around Skyhold now.  Both spirits and demons pressed against the Veil to watch Shepard and the company she had assembled.  Some were familiar, others were new to him.  He recognized the trio who had escorted them through the Nightmare’s domain. He shuddered.  For all they represented Shepard’s greatest virtues, he didn’t care to converse with the dissociated parts of her soul.  She was more than her best.  He didn’t love her because she was good.  He loved her because she tried, despite the darker parts of her nature, to do good. 

He passed easily through the masses assembled, looking for his friend.  The bright and dark spirits alike parted to let him pass, calling out to him in languages ranging from Elvhen to English.  He found his friend sitting in his rotunda, looking at the murals. 

“Falon,” Regret said, embracing him.  “I am glad you came.”   The swirling grey eyes smiled up at him gently.

It looped its arm through Solas’ and drew him out to the battlements.  His banner and Mythal’s flew off carven staffs at the corners of the ramparts.  Dragon statues flanked the entrance.  

He studied it with his physical senses and mental ones.  

“Are you alright, truly?” he asked.

“I am well,” it said firmly. “I feel that I understand more than I ever did before. Your Jane Shepard has shown me much.  Given me much.  I will need to think on what I learned from her for a long time.  Perhaps several ages.”

Solas choked back a laugh. “I fear we may not have that much time.”

It took his hand in its own, clasped it against its chest.  “Tell me your worries, falon.  What troubles you so?” 

Solas felt tiny pinpricks of pain behind his eyes. 

“I don’t know how to stop being Fen’Harel,” he said to it in a hoarse voice.  “I only ever learned how to destroy.  I never built anything.  Everything I have ever touched, I have torn to ruins.  I do not know if I can stop.” 

He could feel the spirit resonate with the emotion in him, when Wisdom would have told him to collect himself and think rationally. 

“You did not know,” Regret told him.  “You thought you were making the People strong enough to stand on their own without the Evanuris to rule them.” 

Solas breath caught in the back of his throat.  “I do not speak of that.  I am not the person to make that right.”

The banners flying in the breeze shifted, replaced by green Inquisition flags. 

“What is it then?  I thought you approved of what Jane Shepard was doing.”

“I do,” Solas said, walking a few feet away from his friend again.  He looked down into the valley.  The scene did not change there.  His war camps had looked much the same as the Inquisition’s, from this high above. 

He closed his eyes.

“I kept…the truth from her. Many truths.  I could justify keeping the truth about myself from her, because she told me at the start that she did not care about my past.  And I believe her.  But I am keeping the truth about her from her.”  

Regret touched his arm, following him to stand next to him.

“Do you really think you can tell her a truth she does not know about herself?  The truth always changes in the telling.  Would telling her really be about her- or about you?”

Solas frowned, considered that. 

“I am being selfish to keep what I know from her,” he said. 

“Yes,” Regret agreed.

They looked at the mountains for another few moments.

“But I do not believe Glyph holds information that will help her defeat Corypheus, bring peace to Thedas, or restore the nation of the elves,” he said.  “Nor solve her mystery of the Blight.  She has other tools now.” 

Regret nodded.

“So which would she regret more?” it asked him.  “That you lied, or that she ever learned the truth?” 

Solas sighed, hid his face in his paired forearms as he leaned against the fortress wall. 

“I will feed you well, either way,” he told it. 

Chapter Text

“A Qunari, a dwarf, an elf, a blood mage, and the reincarnation of Andraste walk into a party,” Varric mused at the gilded gates of the Winter Palace. 

“What’s the punch line?” Bull asked him. 

“Doesn’t need one,” Varric replied.  “The set-up is the entire joke.”

“Don’t let Leliana overhear you,” Shepard said, craning around to talk at them over the butt of her fat, sleepy horse.  “Anything less than the social coup of the season and she feeds us all to the ravens. Alive.” 

“I love parties,” said Hawke. 

Hawke was the only one on Shepard’s team who seemed to be looking forward to the evening.  This might have been due to her outfit, or might have been due to her role in the plan for the evening. 

Hawke was wearing black velvet leggings spider-webbed with silver embroidery under black leather boots sewn with embossed silver plates, which extended halfway up her thighs.  On top, she had a long, mostly-opaque black scarf looped around her neck, crossed over her (considerable) breasts, then tied around her waist. That was all, other than a fair amount of silver jewelry set with enchanted runes.   Her scars were all on display, including the entirety of the exit wound from the Arishok’s greatsword.  Josephine had nearly swallowed her tongue when she saw what Hawke was wearing- and Shepard thought Cullen might faint. 

Hawke was bait.  As Leliana explained it, anyone who spent the evening gawking over Hawke and Varric (resplendent in his own way, having found a way to show off his chest hair even in the red wool uniform the rest of them wore) was not involved in the plot to overthrow Celene and aid Corypheus’ ascension.  Everyone had assured Shepard that it was a very clever idea. 

Shepard thought it was very possible that Hawke and Varric were just looking forward to a romantic evening of showing off for the Orlesians, drinking expensive champagne, then perhaps killing a few conspirators, but she was not about to begrudge her friends the simple pleasures in life.  Such joys came around too infrequently. 

She caught the Iron Bull staring at Hawke’s breasts and sidled her horse over so she could elbow him in the ribs. 

“Ow!” he yelped.  “I thought that that was the point.”

“Not for you,” Shepard said. 

“Solas looked too,” Bull said sullenly.   

Shepard looked suspiciously at Solas, who was squinting innocently into the distance at a row of marble statues of dead empresses. 

“Ignore the barbarian princess and keep a look out for assassins,” Shepard told them both. 

“Yes, tama,” Bull muttered. 

Gaspard met them when they left their horses with the Orlesian version of a valet stand. 

Leliana had described Gaspard as a military man, but in only a few minutes conversation with him, Shepard was quick to see that he was the kind of general who lived for war only because he was good at nothing else.  Still, his type was familiar enough to Shepard that she did not feel any strain from the pleasantries they exchanged while approaching the main hall.

After Gaspard’s few unsubtle attempts at securing Shepard’s support, returned by Josephine’s practiced evasions, Shepard and her company dispersed in the ornate foyer of the Winter Palace. 

Shepard had seen pictures of the Peterhof; she would have accused the Orlesians of cultural misappropriation, but the years between their construction merely proved that all absolute dictators eventually developed a similar sense of style leaning heavily upon the baroque. 

Shepard allowed herself to be herded into the main ballroom.  It was two weeks into fall, under the Thedosian calendar, but the evening was warm and the doors and windows were all open in the hopes of snaring a cross-breeze.  Nonetheless, the mass of people and multitude of beeswax candles in chandeliers and candelabras made the room uncomfortably stuffy, and it was clear from the odor of the nobles and servants alike that regular bathing was not a popular custom. Rather, the various perfumes and colognes sparred with each other with the same intensity as the Orlesians’ conversational gambits.  Shepard knew she’d be nursing a headache by the end of the night, even if she refused each glass of room-temperature champagne or melting limoncello pressed upon her by the roving servers. 

Shepard remembered her first visit to the Presidium as she descended the marble steps to the sunken ballroom floor.  The strangeness of the place.  The alien faces.  The weight of tens of thousands of years of history.  Her anger fighting with her awe.  There was none of that today- even craning her head up to look at the empress, Shepard thought that the room seemed very small. 

Could anyone else tell her heart wasn’t in it?  Shepard did not stray from Josephine’s remarks.  She’d been an Alliance officer most of her adult life- she knew how to stick to the script.  But when the rest of her team dispersed to gather intelligence from the other guests, Shepard felt the familiar swell of displacement overwhelm her.  She did not like parties to begin with.  She did not care for formal events.  She’d always made a point to attend every Hail and Farewell, carefully consume exactly the prescribed number of drinks, and depart as soon as it was diplomatically possible.  Mandatory fun wasn’t, as the saying went.  

“If you keep making that face, everyone will think you are very fearsome,” Josephine’s little sister told her.  

“Yvette,” Josephine warned the girl. 

“I am only saying!” Yvette wailed. 

“Thank you,” Shepard told her.  “I don’t think I will mind that.”

Solas volunteered to canvass the elven servants, a task at which he was much better suited than Shepard, so she idled in the main ballroom, using a steady stare to discourage idle visitors.  Eventually Cullen approached, his sour expression mirroring her own.

“Leliana sent me over here to ask you to dance,” he informed her.

Shepard eyed his tense jaw and averted gaze. 

“So….are you asking me to dance, Commander?  Or simply informing me of an order you intend to disregard?” she said lightly.

Cullen sighed.  “I have been telling…people that I do not dance.  I am about to lose the excuse,” he explained, bending and offering Shepard his arm.

Since he looked like a prince from a child’s cartoon come to life, Shepard laughed and accepted.  

“You may come to regret this,” she teased him. 

“My sword, my honor, and my feet are all for the Inquisition’s cause,” he said solemnly. 

Cullen was a better dancer than Shepard expected, and there were a minimum of toe-stompings while he whirled her around the dance floor.  He did not speak with her though- his arms might have relaxed a bit around her, the longer they spun and stepped, but his jaw remained resolutely tight and still. 

Eventually, a middle-aged pair of women approached them, giggling behind their identical butterfly masks. 

“You two are the most wonderful thing this floor has seen this year!  If we may….?” one asked, grasping Cullen’s upper arm in her firm, lavender-colored talons.  Shooting Shepard a look of resigned dismay, Cullen acquiesced, and each of them were led off by the one half of the pair. 

From this second dance partner (whose straining bosom was at least scented inoffensively with lavender), Shepard was passed on from noble to noble, men and women blending together in a blur of painted masks and ornate lace ruffs.  She was so focused on not missing her dance steps, she had little opportunity to gather any information about the factions circling each other that night. 

She did not look away from her determined step-step-step-whirl until she found Solas bowing to the waist at her elbow, coughing discreetly.

“Your holiness, if I may draw your attention to a certain matter?” he asked, his obsequious tone only mocking to someone who knew him well.  Shepard’s final dance partner, an elderly man with his hair died an implausible shade of yellow, reluctantly relinquished her.

“I thought you might be coming to ask me to dance,” she told him.  He gave her a small smile. 

“Perhaps later.  It will not do the Inquisition’s reputation much good for you to be seen dancing with your ‘elven serving man.’”

“I don’t care,” she said. 

“I know you do not,” he replied, briefly touching her arm.  “Listen, the elven servants are anticipating an attack of some kind tonight, though I did not find anyone willing to admit to knowing the particulars. Equal numbers fingered Gaspard and Briala as the instigators.” 

“If it’s Gaspard, we should stop it,” Shepard whispered to him, drawing him into an alcove.  “What have you learned about Briala?  Would she be reliable enough to rule?”

Solas made a face. “She is…a formidable opponent, certainly.  But the Orlesian nobles would never allow her open rule.  She does not have the support for that.  She has been playing Celene and Gaspard off of the other, offering her spy network for the one willing to make her noble and legitimate her power.”

“Is she the kind of leader the Inquisition should throw its influence behind?” Shepard pressed him. “What are her goals?”

“Greater rights for the elves, most prominently,” Solas admitted.  “Though I wonder how much of that is simply to spite Celene.  I hear confident reports that they were lovers for many years, before falling out over Celene’s purge of Halamshiral.”

“What’s a pogrom or two between friends?” Shepard asked wryly.  “Well, she’s our best lead thus far.  Shall we canvass the castle and see if we can track her down?”

The two of them pulled the Iron Bull and Varric from their respective circles of admirers and left for the servants’ quarters. 

A survey of the area revealed a number of dead servants, assassins, and Briala. 

The elven woman seemed happy to deal without too much inquiry into the Inquisition’s motives or goals, which did not endear her to Shepard.  Shepard returned to the ballroom, already cursing a waste of an evening. 

Celene and her cousin, the Grand Duchess Florianne, each tried to pull Shepard aside and whisper dark rumors about Gaspard. 

“Do you know that that white face powder is carcinogenic?” Shepard told them both.  “Try rice powder instead of antimony and lead.  You’ll cut your facial abscesses by 100%.”

“Shepard,” Leliana hissed in disapproval. 

Shepard left Celene and Florianne to the dancing and ran into a beautiful woman with Melissa Cook’s yellow eyes.  

“Well, well, what have we here?” she purred.

Shepard squinted at her. 

“Have we met?” Shepard asked suspiciously.

“You can’t recall? That suggests either a poor memory or an interesting life,” Morrigan told her. 

 “I know which I’d prefer,” Shepard sighed. 

Celene’s ‘arcane advisor’ suggested that Shepard hunt through yet a different part of the palace in search of Corypheus’ agents.  Thanking her for the best tip she had received yet that night, Shepard reassembled her team and headed for the Grand Apartments. 

“Check out Gaspard’s study first,” Bull suggested, hooking a finger at the trophy room. 

They ransacked the room, turning the desk out for a few more tawdry secrets.  Shepard didn’t need any more convincing.  She wasn’t supporting an oily, petty-minded warlord for the throne, if only because she didn’t think she could keep a civil tongue if she had to deal with him in the future. 

As she left the trophy room, however, one of the mounted heads caught her eye.

“What the hell?!” she swore, leaping to the top of one of the sideboard ands jerking a trophy from the wall. 

It was a waxed, lacquered krogan head, stuffed and preserved.

“A misbegotten monster slain by three brave chevaliers near Lydes, 2:71 Glory.  Presented as a gift to Judicael I on the occasion of his thirtieth year,” Varric read.   “You know what this thing is?”

“She was a krogan,” Shepard hissed.  “A person.  They mounted a person’s head on the wall.”

“Tough luck,” Bull mused. They gazed at it contemplatively.

“Ever seen another?” Shepard asked.  They all shook their heads. 

“This poor creature died seven hundred years ago,” Solas reminded her.  “We do not have time to mourn it tonight.”  

Shepard shook her head. “It’s not that.  It means there were still other people from my galaxy here recently.  Relatively recently.  Besides me. Another group- maybe the descendants of the Andromeda Initiative, maybe others- they made it.  They’re out there, somewhere.”

She blinked a few times, shook her head again.  “You’re right, we have other things to do tonight.  Solas, can you burn it?  I don’t want anyone else looking at this anymore.  She deserves that, at least.” 

He nodded and incinerated the grisly thing with a flick of his fingers, acknowledging Shepard’s grateful look with a nod.

The grand apartments yielded dozens more dead elves, and one live one, who swore she was been set up by Briala. 

“That bitch would have crawled back to Celene even after she burned the alienage,” the woman growled. “Even though Celene had Briala’s parents killed with the rest of her servants!” 

“Love makes people do crazy things,” Varric suggested. 

“Love for power,” Solas replied. 

Shepard had no warning before her barrier flared and slowed the knife.  Even with the purple pulse of energy pushing back against it, the thrown blade sliced through the thick red cashmere of Shepard’s jacket and is turned back only by the thin tactical vest Shepard had layered under her formalwear. Before Varric or Solas could strike back at the assassin, Shepard caught her would-be killer in a stasis field. 

The nondescript elf in anonymous livery strained against the invisible bonds holding him in the air.  

“And whose might you be?” Shepard asked in a bored voice.  “Briala’s?  Celene? Gaspard? Corypheus?”

“Ooh, could still be Qunari,” the Iron Bull reminded them.

The elf sneered at them down his long nose.  His eyes were rimmed red but bright with fanaticism.  

“You do not know my master’s name,” he said.  “Nor will you learn it, before you perish.  He is coming!”  There was some mad cackling.  

“That would be Corypheus, I guess,” Varric said.  “Oops, my finger slipped.”

He shot the man in the forehead with the small gun Shepard had gifted him the previous evening.  Shepard hissed and released her stasis field, dropping the assassin to the floor with a meaty thunk.  

“Varric,” she reproached him. He held up his hands. 

“What, you think the Elder One was telling this guy his secret plans?  I’m tired.  I want to go home and unwrap my wife.”

“Don’t kill the witnesses until I’m done with them,” Shepard said sternly.

“Fine, fine,” Varric said.   

The other assassins in the building were obviously aligned with one of the civil war claimants, until Shepard turned up an ambush in a courtyard sporting a new Fade rift. 

Shepard’s own habit of eliminating witnesses meant that nobody expected her to adroitly crush the demons, close the rift, and lift the Grand Duchess in mid-gloat off her balcony.  The ambush was over in seconds. 

“Any reason to save her for later?” Shepard asked her companions.  They shook their heads.  “Ok, tell Leliana I checked first.”  

Shepard warped the Grand Duchess’ brain inside her skull, and Corypheus’ Orlesian catspaw slid dead to the ground, eyes trickling pink from their corners. 

Shepard wiped her hands on her trousers, though they were only metaphorically dirty. 

“I think I’ve seen enough,” she said.  “Will you tell Josie to bring me the contenders?”

 * * * 

Solas waited for Shepard on the furthest balcony while she spoke with Orlais’ highest.  None of them- even the Grand Duke- evidenced more than mild surprise that Florianne had allied with Corypheus. They understood too well the places the lust for power might lead. 

“And what if we do not agree to your insane demands?” Solas heard Gaspard’s voice carry.  “Will you make war upon the entire empire of Orlais?”  

Shepard threw open the double doors, preparing to stomp out.  She looked back over her shoulder at the furious trio. 

“No,” she said, as though speaking to a small child, or someone very simple.  “I’m not going to fight you.  I’m going to ignore you.  I will tax your holdings, fight your enemies, feed your people, and rule your nation as though you do not exist.  You think the horse will miss the fly on his back?  You’re lying to yourselves if you think you’re riders.   Change is coming.  You are going to tear down the walls you’ve built or you will be up against them.” 

She slammed the doors shut behind her and leaned her stomach against the railing.  She clenched the balustrade with both hands. 

“What did you decide?” he asked. 

“Celene is head of state, but subject to a ruling council including Gaspard, Briala, Fairbanks, and a representative of the Merchants’ Guild.  And I will be sending them a bill of fundamental rights,” she informed him.  Her mouth twisted.  “Leliana is going to have kittens when I tell her.  She said it would never work.”

“If it does not, we will fix it and try again,” he said, reaching out to take her in his arms. 

She ducked her head against his chest and laughed.  He could feel the vibrations through his body. 

“Is salting the earth below this palace and selling the nobles into slavery still an option?” she asked. 

“Nobody would purchase slaves so useless,” he said.  “Come, dance with me.  Play something from your time.”

“Azure Beats Vol. IV?” she asked, eyebrow raised.  “Nobody wants to see me dance to that, apparently.  On this or any other world.” 

“Then something beautiful,” he said.  “This night needs something beautiful in it.” 

After a moment, Shepard nodded, and a man began to croon “a mano a mano” over the chords of something like a pianoforte.  He could hear the waltz in it, so he swept her into twirl.  He loved dancing.  She was far from graceless under his lead, and still so lovely, even after an evening of gory battle.

He was leaning in to press his cheek along the top of her head when the blast took them. 

Shepard was later able to determine that the bomb must have been placed directly below Celene’s platform, and shaped to explode mostly up, rather than out.  It was aimed at a target, not terror.  That was after weeks of investigation, though, and in the moment, Solas knew nothing other than the noise, the force, and then the darkness. 

Chapter Text

It was Solas’ lips on hers, pushing air into her lungs, that woke her up this time.  She barely managed to turn her head before her coughing turned into a gag.  Her throat and nostrils were full of greasy smoke, choking her.  Shepard tried to open her eyes, but the right one was gummed shut.  When she could blink enough soot out of her left to focus on Solas’ face, only inches from her own, she saw his grimace of fear slowly subside into relief.  He slumped away from her.  Shepard weakly batted his arms away to struggle up into a seated position.  

Solas grabbed her shoulders, focusing her on him when she tried to look around.  His mouth was open and his lips were moving, but Shepard couldn’t hear what he was saying.  She couldn’t hear anything, actually.  Just a vague roaring like a distant ocean.  She lifted a shaking hand to touch his face, but her thumb left a trail of mingled soot and blood across his cheekbone.  He flinched away.  His lips moved again.

“I can’t hear you,” Shepard said, and his eyes widened.  She couldn’t hear her own voice.  He said something again, moving his lips in exaggerated fashion, but she realized that her UT wouldn’t work unless it could pick up aural input.  They weren’t speaking each other’s languages.  Shepard patted her head behind her right ear, but her hand came away covered in blood.  Solas’ eyes narrowed on her hand, and he grabbed her wrist and tried to clasp hands with her.  She felt the surge of his magic inside her, but when she tried to summon healing, a stab of pain shot through the right side of her skull, right where her amp plugged in.  She closed her good eye and grunted, sucking a breath through her teeth.  She really missed her medigel injectors. 

She breathed through the pain and opened her eye again, looking down to take stock of her injuries. Whatever they were, they were focused on her head, and she felt like she was at least thinking ok, even if she might have to deal with her concussion later.  Solas had stripped off her jacket and his own and pillowed them beneath her. They were in their undershirts, and Shepard’s tactical vest was in tatters.  Feeling it swing free around her shoulders, Shepard guessed that it had saved her life for the second time that night.  Whatever had hit her had gotten her from behind and slightly to the right.  She supposed she’d shielded Solas with her body, and thanked all absent deities for that, since her enhancements would fix her soon enough, and Solas had no such protection. 

She finally turned to try to see where she’d come from, and barely recognized the rubble of the Winter Palace’ ballroom behind her.  Great columns of oily black smoke were rising out of it. 

“Is everyone out?” she asked Solas, looking around them.  She didn’t see anyone else nearby.  They were in a bit of garden below the remains of the balcony they’d been standing on- there was a trail of twin ruts in the grass leading to the rubble where Solas must have dragged her out. 

Solas was trying to get a better look at Shepard’s head wound, but she grabbed his hand and stilled it. She looked at him in the eyes.

“Everyone else?” she said slowly and emphatically.  “Leliana? Josephine?”

Solas’ face was stricken. He said something she couldn’t follow, but the small shrug of his shoulders gave his meaning away. 

Shepard braced herself against him and staggered to her feet.  The warmth on her temple was blood, she knew.  She wasn’t worried too much about it.  Scalp wounds always bled like a bitch.  She reached under her tactical vest and tore a strip of fabric off the bottom of her undershirt.  She tied it around her head, wincing when it came in direct contact with her injury. It would keep gore from tricking into her working eye.  

Solas wrapped an arm around her midsection to steady her, and she wished it weren’t needed.  She caught him favoring his left wrist out of the corner of the eye, and tapped it with a delicate finger.  His lower lip jumped in pain.  It wasn’t moving unnaturally, so she didn’t think it was broken, but it was probably sprained.  They’d fallen at least eight feet in the explosion into the garden.  Shepard tore another strip off her shirt and used it with her discarded jacket to rig him a quick sling.  Then they were off around the side of the building. 

Her legs were working just fine, Shepard was glad to discover, even if the ringing in her ears affected her balance and gave her a sense of vertigo. 

When they rounded the corner of the building, Shepard was gratified to see a swarm of activity descending upon the building.  Amid the soot-streaked lords and ladies pouring out of a large hole in the masonry, Shepard spotted Cullen carrying a servant out over one shoulder and dragging a weeping lady along with the other.  Leliana was on the ground some ways away, wrapping bandages around her leg, but she was alive.  She saw Bull running back inside.  He had blood stains up and down his uniform, but from the way he was moving, she didn’t think it was his own. 

Solas tugged her away from the building, and Shepard was about to protest when she saw that his destination was Hawke and Varric.  Hawke had lost her scarf somewhere, and was wearing someone’s jacket open over her bare chest.  She was cross-legged on the ground, and Varric lay with his head in her lap. Both of Hawke’s hands were pressed against Varric's abdomen.  Their eyes were closed.  Shepard felt her heart seize cold in her throat until she saw the faint rise and fall of Varric’s chest. 

Hawke raised her head to look at them both, her expression grim.  Her lips moved in apparent response to something Solas had said, but Shepard’s hearing had not yet returned and she didn’t know what either was saying.   Shepard pushed away from Solas so that she could see them both.  Solas gestured at Shepard.  Hawke shook her head violently.  Solas’ face grew cold, and he gestured more authoritatively, taking a step towards Hawke and Varric.  Hawke groped at her waist for a weapon that wasn’t there.  Varric gasped, but did not open his eyes.  Hawke leaned in and patted his cheek.  Varric seemed to breathe a bit more deeply.  Hawke looked up again at them, her expression wary.  Shepard gave Solas a warning look; she wasn’t sure what had passed between the two, but if he was threatening Hawke, that was an attested way of ensuring his imminent demise.  Warily, Solas crouched down next to Hawke and extended his hand.  She blinked at him, surprised.  She gingerly took his hand, then pressed it first against Varric.  After a moment, he sucked in a deeper lungful of air and opened his eyes.  He pulled a wrist over his mouth and started coughing against it.  Hawke relaxed, and shot Solas a look that was mostly grateful.  She reached out to Shepard, and Shepard knelt down in front of her. 

Hawke looked around suspiciously, then dipped her fingers against the right side of Shepard’s head. Shepard opened her mouth to protest- antibiotic production was still not up and running- then she felt a wave of Hawke’s magic (it felt red and angry) pulse into her.  It carried with it a note of metal, and death, but after it wrapped around and through her, Shepard’s ears popped, and so abruptly that she lost her balance, her hearing returned. 

When noise returned, including the pounding of her own heart, the screams were the loudest sound.

Shepard took a deep breath, locked eyes with Hawke.  She had her arms curled protectively around Varric, who was still coughing.

“Thanks,” she said. Hawke nodded gravely.  Shepard flexed her abdominal muscles and leapt to her feet.  

“Let’s go,” she told Solas, tilting her head back towards the burning palace.  He gritted his teeth as though he would have liked to argue with her, but he said nothing. 

She took the route back in at a sprint, dodging the guests who were still emerging.  She nearly ran into the Iron Bull, who had no less than three elven servants draped over his massive shoulders as he stumbled out under their combined weight.  

“Who’s still inside?” she called to him.

Bull grunted, dropping one of his riders, and swatting him on the rear to encourage him to run in the correct direction. 

“Haven’t found Josephine yet,” he gasped.  “A few who aren’t going to make it anyway.  Found those three in a wine cellar.  The roof’s down over the other side of the ballroom.  Couldn’t move the beams.”

“Got it,” Shepard told him. He pulled an open bottle of white wine out of one of his pockets. 

“Here,” he said.  “All I could find.  Wet some cloth over your faces if you’re going in.”

Bull picked up the other two elves and walked away more quickly.  Solas pulled off his shirt and ripped it into bandanas.  Shepard took one, wet it with the wine, and stuffed the remaining cloth into her pockets.  She’d need it if she found any more survivors. 

Once they stepped through the hole, it was so dark from the smoke that she could barely see.  It filled her nostrils and stung her eyes. There were still flames leaping up to the ceiling. 

“Can you do something about the fire?” she asked Solas, who was already sputtering under the wine-soaked cloth.  He gave a cautious nod, then held out his hand.  Ice spider-webbed away from it, generating a hissing column of white steam where it landed on the flames.  The heat was perhaps a bit less.  Shepard turned on the flashlight on her omni-tool, and swung it around the room. On this side, the roof was entirely missing.  There were shapes beneath the beams and rubble that could have been people, but none were moving.  Nobody in this area could have survived.  She gestured at Solas, and they moved further into the ballroom. 

A bit of metal caught Shepard’s eye, and she squinted through the smoke.  It was Briala’s mask, fallen next to its owner.  Her brown eyes stared sightlessly at the hole in the roof, where smoke plumed out.  Gaspard was face down, a few feet away.  Solas turned him over, then shook his head.   Shepard closed Briala’s eyes.  

It had been some minutes since the blast- Shepard didn’t know how long it she’d been out, but someone had been through already and had pulled a few of the more-complete bodies into respectful positions.

“There are none left alive,” Solas said urgently.  “I fear we will be overcome by the smoke.” 

Her scanner wouldn’t help find live bodies against the backdrop of the flames, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet.

“Josephine!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.  

She paused, and heard a faint answering cry. Shepard swung her flashlight around but couldn’t find her.

Solas tapped her shoulder. 

“That wall,” he said, pointing to a fallen piece of masonry.  “Can you move it?  It’s blocking a doorway” 

Without thinking about it, Shepard engaged her biotics, only to send another blinding wave of pain through her as her implant misfired.  She staggered into Solas, nearly knocking them down to the floor.  She clamped her hand over the base of her amp- it was hot to the touch.  Better not do that, she thought.  Don’t cook your brains in your skull.

“Hang on, Josephine!” she yelled.  She grabbed at the wall with her bare hands.  It wobbled a bit- the bricks were mortared to each other, but no longer secured to the foundation. 

“Help me move it, Solas,” she directed, and they both caught it by the edge, pushing it until it collapsed back into the ballroom.  Behind it was a small doorway into an alcove that had held glassware and punch bowls. Josephine was crouched in the back, cradling her younger sister’s head. Celene lay next to them, unmoving. Josephine was coughing, tears tracing tracks through the soot on her cheeks as she called her sister’s name. 

Shepard ducked into the alcove and quickly checked Celene’s pulse.  It was weak, thready, but present.  

“Carry her out,” she told Solas, moving on to Yvette. 

“I will not leave you here,” he said, shaking his head.

“That’s an order, Solas!” she snapped at him.

“I’m not your soldier!” he retorted.  She rose and pushed him in the chest with a flat palm.   “You’re wasting time,” she snapped at him.  “I’ll be right behind you.” 

He hesitated one more second, eyes angry, then acquiesced, scooping up the empress in his arms and gingerly stepping past the broken crystal littering the small room. 

“Josephine, are you hurt?” Shepard asked first, observing the stains on her uniform.  

Josephine was crying too hard to answer, but she lifted her right hand. It had a nasty slice in it clean through the tendons, showing the white of bone within.  

The sharp glass made it difficult to get closer to the fallen girl on the floor, but Shepard swept the largest shards away and scooted closer.

She found Yvette’s wrist, checked it for a pulse.  Nothing. 

“Josephine,” Shepard whispered.  She cleared her throat.  ”Josie…”

Josephine shook her head violently, throat bobbing.  “She’s caught under this beam.  We need to get her out.”

“Josephine, she’s. . .”

Josephine fluttered both her hands, splattering a bit of blood on them both. 

“She’s caught!  You have to get her out!” she said, a note of hysteria entering her voice.  

Shepard squinted through the smoky air.  One of the roof beams had cracked, pinning Yvette’s leg to the floor.  Her leg was nearly crushed to the ground just below her pelvis.   She would have bled out in less than a minute. Shepard swallowed hard.  

“Alright, Josephine,” Shepard said to her softly.  “I’ll lift the beam, but you’ll have to pull her free quickly when I say so.  And then we need to get out, ok?”

Josephine nodded unsteadily. She grabbed the back of Yvette’s dress with her good hand.

Shepard turned off the flashlight on her omni-tool, plunging them into darkness.  She didn’t want Josephine to get a good look at this part. She turned on the laser function, and started carving out a V-shaped section of the beam pinning Yvette’s body. 

“Ready, Josephine?” she asked.  Josephine gave a small assent.  In one instant, Shepard kicked out the bottom section of the beam using the crack she’d carved in it.  The roof shuddered alarmingly, but held. Josephine pulled her sister back towards her, fabric and flesh tearing. 

Josephine fell into fresh weeping, but Shepard quickly pulled Yvette away from her and yelled at Josephine to follow her out of the ballroom.  

Cradling the girl’s body to her chest, she led the two of them out of the ballroom and into the clean starlight. 

“Inquisitor!” Cullen called as she staggered out.  He quickly relieved her of her burden.  “The Inquisitor is alive!”

There was a ragged crowd of nobles, servants, and Inquisition members gathered around the ballroom exit. 

Cullen quickly approached her to relieve her of Yvette’s body. 

“Is she…?”he asked softly. Shepard shook her head sadly. “Someone needs to see to Josie,” she murmured to him.  He nodded, and called one of the guards to assist him. 

Shepard looked around her. Everyone was staring in shock, but even the able-bodied didn’t seem to be doing anything. 

Grabbing people at random from the crowd, she assigned survivors to bucket lines, triage, and casualty listkeeping.  When Halamshiral’s garrison arrived a few minutes later, she began giving them orders too.  Whether they recognized the bloody woman in a torn undershirt and leather pants or not, they seemed happy to have someone telling them what to do. 

Iron Bull eventually tapped her on the shoulder and whispered in her ear that she needed to talk to Leliana and Cullen.

Shepard nodded to him and followed him to one of the outbuildings which had been repurposed to care for the wounded.  Cullen sat at the end of Leliana’s cot, with his head tipped back against the wall. His eyes were closed.  

Leliana’s face was drawn and her color was not good.  She had a tourquinet wrapped around one thigh, with dark staining down her leg from the wound.  

“Leliana, you need a healer,” Shepard immediately snapped. 

“I’ll live,” Leliana gritted right back.  “We need to decide right now what we are going to do or lose Orlais.” 

“We can worry about that when you’re safe,” Shepard said. 

“None of us are safe if Orlais falls!”  Leliana insisted, twitching in pain when she jostled her leg.  

“Celene is alive,” Shepard said. 

“She has not regained consciousness,” Cullen said, opening his eyes. “We just spoke to the healer.”  

So much for her grand peace.  Shepard frowned. “Who’s next in line after Celene and Gaspard?” 

Leliana gave a choked sound that might be a laugh.  “After tonight and Therinfal Redoubt, we are running low on nobles.  It will not be clear until the casualty lists are done. Maybe not even then.  Perhaps Duke Bastien, Vivienne’s duke, but he has not been seen in public for months.” 

Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingertips. 

“Ok, Cullen, go find the three highest-ranking military officers here.  Have Bull take them to Skyhold.  They can issue orders from there.  Through us. You’ll be command on the ground. I’m declaring martial law until we figure out the succession.”

Cullen sat up straighter. “Shepard, they will say you are taking hostages.” 

“I am taking hostages, Cullen!” Shepard snapped at him. “Go do it.”

Grimacing, he rose and left. 

Once he was gone, Shepard gingerly put her hand on Leliana’s ankle. 

“If that tourniquet isn’t loosened regularly, you may lose the leg,” she said to Leliana. 

“If it is, I may lose my life,” Leliana said.  “I know which I’d prefer.”

Shepard sighed.  “My blood type is O negative.  I can probably give you blood, if we find sterile tubing, though I’m not sure what my nano-upgrades would do to your system.”  

Leliana shook her head from side to side.  “It does not look like you have enough to spare.” 

They sat there a moment, neither speaking. 

“You should go outside again,” Leliana said.  “Let them see you doing good work.  Too many will say that you arranged this to consolidate all Orlais under your own power.”

Shepard snorted. “They’ll say that anyway.”

“Yes,” said Leliana, eyes fluttering shut.

“Who did do this?” Shepard asked.  “Could it be the Qunari?  Could they make a bomb this big?  Or Corypheus, using that orb?”

Leliana opened her eyes and looked at her again.  “Bull didn’t tell you?  There are already handbills posted around Halamshiral.  One of my agents brought one.”

She weakly fished in her tunic, and Shepard had to reach into Leliana’s jacket and pull the paper out.

It was printed on cheap, oily paper in ink that smudged dark brown when touched.  But the words were clear. 

FEN’HAREL STRIKES DOWN THE ENEMIES OF THE ELVEN NATION IN RETRIBUTION FOR THE MASSACRE OF YOUR COUNTRYMEN

DEATH TO CELENE!  DEATH TO GASPARD!  LIBERATION FOR ALL ELVES!

Chapter Text

It took a few weeks before everyone was stable enough to return to Skyhold from Halamshiral. Cullen had to bring in troops from Ferelden to keep the peace in the streets; waves of reprisals and counter-reprisals had left the elven alienage and the surrounding human neighborhoods in flames.  Fen’Harel was a ghost; when Leliana’s agents found one of the bombmakers, he was ignorant even under Charter’s ungentle persuasion, and could reveal nothing but dead-drops gone dark and masked conspirators vanished into the wind.

Shepard moved from estate to estate around the Winter Palace with her team.  The enforced quartering of the Inquisition’s finest was ostensibly to avoid over-burdening any particular noble family, but more practically let them know the Inquisition was watching them.   The Inquisition was consolidating power.  It would brook no rebellion.  

Leliana kept the leg, largely due to Hawke’s ungentle ministrations, begrudgingly administered after Varric made her help.  Leliana walked with a limp now.  If she ever slept more than four hours at a stretch, Shepard didn’t know about it.

Josephine locked herself in a room for a full day, then emerged with a stack of correspondence and red, shadowed eyes.  She wept on Leliana’s shoulder during her sister’s hastily-arranged funeral, but had not spoken to Shepard.  She no longer came to strategy meetings.

Cullen was unhappy about declaring martial law, but had somehow convinced his captive trio of colonels that it was their idea to do so.  He asked Shepard what she wanted to do about looters.  He nodded absently when Shepard told him to hang them, like he hadn’t expected a different answer, but was going through the motions to ask. 

Solas was….

Shepard woke up in a borrowed bed the morning after the ball, and there was a hollow in the sheets next to her like he’d slept there, but had left before she woke up.  She almost thought he was angry at her about something, but fuck if she knew what it could be about.  Almost dying on him, maybe.  In any event, he was avoiding her.  She tried to corner him, but words failed against his stiff, stony face.

“I died twice before,” she eventually got out.  “They brought me back.  I don’t know if I really can die, anymore.  I’m half metal, and it’s Reaper tech, and I’ve got cellular repair going on at the molecular level, and I might see all of you die someday and go on to live forever,” and she realized she was yelling in his face, hand twisted in his tunic.  She released him like the touch was burning and spun on her heel.  Now they were avoiding each other. 

Her biotics weren’t working. Her implant, really.  ‘Rattled,’ that was what Kaidan had called it.  How long had it taken him to recover?  Two months in Huerta, more?  He wouldn’t have accepted the SPECTRE position if he hadn’t recovered to his fullest.  Kaidan had never given less than his best, never lied.  And had he ever had her number- he’d caught her in every lie she’d told him, from ‘I’m fine’ all the way to ‘I’m not working for Cerberus.’ Even when she hadn’t known she was lying.  

Had those doctors in Huerta actually done anything to fix him?  Was time and rest all she needed to cure her headaches and nightmares?  Shepard wasn’t sure what the correct course of treatment was for a rattled implant.  She imagined Chakwas’ response if she told her ‘I let my new friend, who I’m fairly certain is a high-functioning sociopath, dip her fingers in my blood and then fix it with dark magic.’  She’d find herself knocked out with a specialty cocktail of anti-psychotics and sedatives as soon as her back was turned. 

Shepard almost cried when Cassandra arrived on a lathered horse two days after the explosion.  The woman didn’t smile, didn’t advise, but picked up the strands of diplomacy that Josie let fall, visited Celene’s bedside daily, and matter-of-factly directed the subsumption of the Orlesian state into the Inquisition hierarchy. 

After a few weeks, when Leliana was confident that the generals and nobles would continue to look to the Inquisition for command, they returned to Skyhold. 

The advance scouts told her that the gates were closed.  Shepard called back into the formation for Cassandra, and rode up to the front with her. 

When they reached the foregates, Shepard lifted her hand to display the Mark.  Figures moved and bustled behind the arrow-slots until Dorian’s face finally appeared over the top of the ramparts. 

“Herald!” he said, relief making his usual sarcasm sound cheerful.  “Very glad you’re checking in.  We had a spot of trouble with some Qunari.  Not that they said they were Qunari- no, they waited until they were in the keep before they started smashing things and yelling about restoring order.  It was rather contradictory.  I asked them to leave politely, and then my daughter threw some chowder on them.  It went downhill from there.  In any event, we’ve been a little more discerning about having company over ever since.” 

“Well, I’m back,” Shepard said. 

“And I am just delighted beyond words to see you.  How are the Orlesians?” he asked. 

“Haven’t you heard? Mostly dead,” Shepard informed him. 

“Terrible news,” he said, after a moment.  “But better than all dead, I suppose.  Would you like to come in?”

“Yes, Dorian, I would very much like to come in instead of standing outside the gates of my own castle,” she told him, patience nearly evaporated. 

 * * * 

Merrill was amazed at how much had changed in a few short years.  Not Hawke, of course, she never changed.  But everyone else.  She liked Skyhold; everyone was very polite to her, even the humans.  Nobody had said a word to her about having a human baby-not the humans, not even the elves.  It was probably, one of the gardeners told her, because the Inquisitor had an elven lover.  Solas. 

She liked Solas too. He never told her to go away and stop bothering him when she asked him questions.  For a non-Dalish, he knew a lot of wonderful old stories.   Merrill recited them to her baby at night, very softly so as not to wake Carver.  She wondered why he looked so sad all the time, when it seemed like he finally had a home and someone to love and something important to do.  That’s all she’d ever wanted, anyway. 

People accepted her here. Whether that was because of Hawke or Carver or the Inquisitor, she wasn’t sure, but she had plenty to eat, plenty of work to do in the library or the Undercroft, and everyone she loved under one roof.  She was as happy as a halla in a cloverfield, and she couldn’t understand why it was that not everyone felt the same. 

“It’s because a bunch of indescribably powerful, insane, ancient people are out there trying to burn the whole world down and we’re supposed to stop them,” Shepard told her when she said as much. 

Shepard had a little line between her eyebrows since returning from the Winter Palace, like she was in pain.  Merrill wanted to help, but she’d never been any good at healing spells.  She couldn’t even catch Hawke’s trick of telling blood where to go and what to do.  And Hawke never wanted to talk about it. 

“But you’re trying to stop them,” Merrill pointed out.  “I think that’s wonderful.  Don’t you like helping?” 

Shepard gave a sour laugh. “Is that what I’m doing? According to Varric, I’ve managed to decapitate every institution in the entire country in less than a year.  I couldn’t do worse if I were trying to wreck this world.” 

“That’s not true,” Merrill hurried to tell her.  “It’s not your fault that you came here at the same time as Corypheus and Fen’Harel. You’re doing your best.  Everybody knows it.  And even if they don’t say it, they’re all glad you’re here.”  

“You think?” Shepard said, looking out her picture window and drumming her fingers on her desk.  “I would think Cullen could meet my eyes if he thought I were making good decisions.  I made him execute half a dozen people after the Winter Palace. Because I was too busy to do it myself.”

Well, if that was what was worrying Shepard, that was easily resolved.  “Oh, that’s just because he’s in love with you.  He never worried about executions before.  He made over a dozen Tranquil before Hawke killed the Knight-Commander,” Merrill said reassuringly. 

“What?” Shepard said, spinning around to stare at her. 

Oh, was that one of the things Merrill wasn’t supposed to say out loud?  Shemlen social customs were still so hard to read.  Dalish social customs, too.  She frowned.

“I just meant he stares at you all the time like Varric did at Hawke.  It’s sweet, really,” Merrill said, slightly embarrassed.  

Shepard shook her head. “Not that.  That’s…manageable.  What do you mean ‘made tranquil?”

“You didn’t know? That’s how Tranquil are made.  The Templars do it.  When Circle mages didn’t obey.  That’s why Anders blew up the Chantry.  He wanted the Circle mages to fight instead of dying one by one.” 

Shepard’s mouth stretched into a long, flat line. 

“I didn’t know.  I thought the Tranquil were just…born that way. They used to be like everyone else?”

Merrill impulsively reached across the table and grabbed Shepard’s hand. 

“It’s very sad, isn’t it? But the Inquisition is protecting the mages.  And Cullen isn’t doing that anymore.  Hawke would never let him.  She’d kill him if he tried.” 

Shepard turned back away from Merrill. 

“Also not the problem, Merrill.”

This was not good. Merrill had come up to Shepard’s quarters trying to cheer her up, and now Shepard was more upset than when she had started.  The next time she came up, she would bring cake.  Everyone liked cake. 

“Would you like to hear another story about Fen’Harel?” Merrill asked in desperation.  “I haven’t told you the one about the slow arrow.”  

“Yes,” Shepard said, still looking at the distant mountains, but then she abruptly swiveled back. 

“First tell me, is there any way he could be working with Corypheus?  It’s awfully coincidental that they’re both active after hundreds or thousands of years at the same time.  And Solas said that Corypheus’ orb was elven,” Shepard’s voice was picking up pace, getting excited. 

Merrill couldn’t help but pick up Shepard’s excitement. 

“Ooh, how did Solas know that? I’ve never heard of anything like that, and I was almost a keeper.  An orb?  Where did he see it?” 

“In the Fade,” Shepard said, smiling in victory.  “Nobody’s seen Fen’Harel in the flesh.  Or Mythal, or the others.  They’re in the Fade, and Corypheus is out here.  Corypheus is doing Fen’Harel’s dirty work.  The elven gods are influencing Corypheus from the Fade. He’s doing their work for them.  I guess this world isn’t what they wanted.”

“That’s very confusing,” said Merrill. “Corypheus wanted to serve the Old Gods, not the elven gods. He’s from Tevinter, and Tevinter tore down Arlathan.”

“They weren’t actually elves, Merrill.  Just power-hungry assholes hoarding all the tech for themselves.  The Old Gods are probably just a different group of them. Didn’t you say Fen’Harel worked with the Forgotten Ones too?  Sounds like an equal-opportunity terrorist for hire.”

“That’s terrible, if it’s true,” Merrill said.  “The Old Gods started the Blights.  They rise as archdemons when the darkspawn corrupt them.”

She paused. 

“Could your people turn into dragons?” Merrill asked.

“No,” Shepard admitted. “But this planet is really weird.” 

 * * * 

 “Have you returned to your ship since we secured it?” Solas asked Shepard when he found her in the Undercroft. 

The surprised look on her face when he walked down the stairs gave him a pang of guilt.  She didn’t know why he was avoiding her.  He hoped that she did not believe it was something she had done. 

“You know I haven’t,” she said, setting aside the piece of machinery she had in hands and giving him her full attention. 

“It occurred to me that you may be able to use some of the parts in conjunction with the machines you retrieved from the Temple of Dirthamen,” he said.

She winced.  “I’d rather not cannibalize the ship, if I don’t have to, but I should probably make an inventory just in case.  Good thought.  Want to come along?” 

She was trying to be casual, he could tell.  He wanted to embrace her, confess everything, throw himself on her mercy.  But fear froze his feet.  Fear and hope that this time it was not his fault.  That he had not chosen poorly once again. 

“Of course,” he inclined his head. 

Shepard was waiting for something else, waiting for him to say what he was thinking. 

“I shall go and prepare for our journey,” he said, like a coward.  He turned away before he could see her face fall. 

He didn’t have packing to do, of course, but he did have reports stolen from Leliana’s desk of elven rebellions cropping up across Orlais, and a string of small outrages in response.  He plotted them across a map, trying to find the pattern.  What combination of fear and anger kindled thousands of years of oppression into open revolt.  Also reports of Qunari assassins hitting the Inquisition and Corypheus alike.  They had not yet picked a horse, or perhaps the fall of either or both would suit their plans.  He fell asleep at his desk, ink pooling beneath his fingertips.  

Shepard did not come herself to collect him the next morning, and he had no right to be disappointed.   The Iron Bull knocked respectfully enough on his door, though, so he had no reason to believe that she had spoken of their recent distance to anyone else.  

It was not quite a day’s travel to the Viking, but even with the easy journey, conversation faltered.  The Iron Bull tried to draw both of them into conversation, but they were trapped in their own unhappy thoughts.  Eventually, they settled for a game of chess, which passed the time more enjoyably than he probably deserved.  Shepard simply snorted when the Iron Bull asked her to play the victor.  

“Never ends well.  For me.  And my poor, defenseless pawns.  I cede in advance.  You two can have my shower.” 

“What’s a shower?” Bull asked, confused.

“Bianca’s next invention. Look, there’s my ship.” 

 Solas was glad to see that it appeared undisturbed, though the area remained free of snow and ice in the early autumn sun. 

Solas trailed after Shepard as she hit the door hatch and entered the ship.   It was clean inside.  As she had the previous visit, she hit the panel next to the hatch by sheer routine, but this time the lights promptly turned on throughout the cabin.

“Huh,” she said, a note of delight in her voice.  “Guess the solar cells charged up.  Let’s see what we have.” 

She bustled in growing excitement around the cabin, flipping switches and communing with them using her omni-tool. 

Solas continued looking around the ship, trailed by the bemused Bull. 

“What are you looking for?” Bull asked him. 

“Damage,” he said smoothly. “The Inquisitor has suggested such craft were not meant to land on the earth, but to remain in the sky.” 

“Oh,” said Bull.  “It looks like it’s holding up just fine.” 

Shepard stuck her head out the hatch.  “The fabrication center is working again.  Now we have two!”

“Yeah?”  Bull answered.  “More guns?  I guess that’s good.” 

“If Fen’Harel is making them, we have to keep up,” Shepard said.  “And armor.  The next explosion is not going to catch us all dicks out. “

She pressed a few more buttons. 

“I think I can fix the comms with a few more parts.  But the good news is, I can make the parts.  We’ll be back in touch with the rest of the galaxy soon, guys.”

Solas gritted his teeth, tried to keep his face still. 

“That’s…good?”  Bull said.

“Very good,” Shepard said. “Maybe I can start delivering on some of those big promises I made.  I’m going to get the situation under control, but I could really use a supply drop. I’m sure whoever is out there now will trade us some colony foundation packages for all the eezo you guys have just lying around here.” 

“I thought you did not have the refined ore you needed to get the ship working again,” Solas said, proud of himself for the way he did not let his voice waver.

“That’s just to get it flying.  I can restore a comms unit blindfolded and taking heavy fire.  And have!  I won’t need to fix this thing up if I can hail the Andromeda Initiative or whoever. Eezo’s much more valuable than one lousy shuttle.”

“Qun’ll go nuts, meeting a bunch of people who developed flying ships without ever getting their houses in order first,” Bull mused.  “It kind of disproves the whole thing.  Oh well.” 

Shepard took down a few notes on her omni-tool and played around with the fabrication center for a bit, eventually producing what she claimed were medical supplies.  When she said she was ready to leave and set up camp, though, he asked if he could have a turn with it. 

He knew it was a risk, making the request, but he wasn’t likely to have another chance.  She agreed readily enough though, likely pleased to see him embracing her technology. 

When he was certain she and Bull were out of sight, he pressed his hands against the interface display and asked it to report the last ten transactions. 

He didn’t know what IV tubing, defibrillators, or sterile salts were, but he had a fairly good idea what ten kilograms of nitroglycerin might be used for.  Solas deleted the log, wondering when he’d learn to stop making the same mistakes over and over again.

* * * 

Shepard and her team set off at first light the next morning.  Getting an early move out was much preferable to lying awake next to Solas, staring at the canvas ceiling above them, and not speaking or touching.  

It wasn’t exactly a well-traveled route back to Skyhold, so Shepard was surprised to see two figures standing by the side of the road, waiting for them.  One was Shepard’s size or a bit taller, the other apparently a child.

“I had hoped to encounter you before your return to Skyhold,” said the taller figure, removing her hood and letting the morning sunlight catch on her golden eyes. 

Shepard looked around for where Morrigan might have arrived from, but there was nothing but wilderness around them. 

“Ah, you are wondering at my precipitous appearance,” Morrigan said.  “’Tis one of the matters I wished to discuss.  I have aid for you, do you wish it.” 

“I can practically hear the strings snapping tight on that offer,” Solas said dryly. 

Morrigan grimaced. “Such is the nature of the world. I left Halamshiral barely ahead of those who would strike out at all they cannot understand.  Celene died two hours ago.” 

Shepard sucked in a disappointed breath, closing her eyes briefly. 

“I suppose you’d better join the Inquisition then, Morrigan.  It sounds like we’re all that’s left,” Shepard told her, extending her hand. 

Chapter Text

“It’s the smallest mass effect relay I’ve ever seen,” Shepard said, admiring the Eluvian.  “And you say you fixed one yourself, Merrill?” 

“Oh, I had help,” Merrill said modestly.  “Hawke, and some of my clan’s tools.” 

“I am curious as to how you know of such magic,” Morrigan said suspiciously.  “Who did you say your people were?” 

“The Trevelyans, haven’t you heard?” Shepard said after an awkward pause. Shepard planned to exercise discretion with the witch until she determined where her loyalties lay.  

Shepard entertained a momentary fantasy of reprogramming the Eluvian to connect right back to the Conduit and stepping through it back onto the Citadel. 

“Let’s get Bianca and Dagna on this.  If the colonists could make these, there’s no reason why we can’t too.  It’s probably just an issue of sufficient eezo.”  Maybe exploring the Eluvian network would lead to some group of people more conversant with quantum physics than her Inquisition. 

When Shepard detoured back by the mess, she spotted a gagglefuck of bewildered young soldiers asking after Cullen. 

“Hey kids, training is down in the valley,” she told them.  “What are your orders?”

Not recognizing the tiny woman in a black jumpsuit as the Inquisitor, they nervously confessed that Warden Blackwall had not come down to muster and they were looking for his quarters. 

Shepard hadn’t given him a thought since Adamant.  Cullen said he was good at his job; Shepard had enough problems to squash without interfering with things that were going well.

Shepard dropped by Cullen’s office, asked him to assign someone to tell the DINQs what to do.  He apologized for the wayward soldiers and promised to look into Blackwall’s disappearance. 

He reported back a few days later that the putative Blackwall was really a former Orlesian army officer named Thom Rainier, a wanted war criminal, and now imprisoned in Val Royeaux awaiting execution. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Shepard sighed.  “Well, get him out and take him to mast, then.” 

Cullen blinked in surprise. “That’s it?  For misleading the Inquisition and murdering a lord with his entire family?”  

“Oh, is everyone in the Inquisition supposed to announce all the people they’ve killed and the names they’ve used?  Hello, I’m Commander Shepard, and I’m the Butcher of Torfan,” Shepard said, leaning back against the wall of Cullen’s office and picking a hangnail.  She cast a significant look at Cullen.  He flinched. 

“As you say, Inquisitor,” he said softly.

And Shepard didn’t think too much about it after that.

 * * * 

Three weeks searching. Ten agents interrogated.  Two times he stood outside the door to Shepard’s chambers and almost knocked, almost asked her to help him.  She would have helped him if he told her he was chasing the bombers.  How could he ask for her help, though, if the trail would inevitably lead back to him? 

So it took longer.  He had let his contacts dwindle.  Dreamed in Shepard’s arms instead of the paths of the Fade.

The plot to bomb the Winter Palace was a good one.  It delivered retribution for a specific wrong to the right people at the right place at the right time.  The collateral damage had been minimal.  Every elf in Halamshiral had a motive.  But only those he had trusted with access to the Viking had the opportunity. 

Still, he wanted to reject the proof that led him inevitably to one person, and one dream. 

Bowe still fished for redgills.  His jaw still did not close over broken teeth.  Even bathed in blood, Rogelan could not make her brother whole again.  She looked no more or less content than the last time he had seen her.

“Why, Rogelan?” he asked, coming to sit beside her, tail wrapped around his paws.

She looked at him with mild consternation.  Her burns had healed with barely a scar, thanks to the medigel Solas brought back from his first trip to the Viking. 

“Why what, my lord?” she asked, confused.  She settled her woven shawl more firmly around her shoulders.  Solas had found her employment in an orphanage in Halamshiral. After she healed from the battle at Haven, he had thought to give her honorable retirement, and a measure of peace. She insisted upon continuing their work, and he had tasked her with the distribution of medicine.  No elven children had died of summer fevers this year in Halamshiral.  Instead, Shepard’s peace had perished when Rogelan turned a material that could have been a medicine into a bomb.  Rogelan had always been a good listener.  Habits of excellence.  Enough patience to sit for hours with Glyph. 

“Why did you betray me, Rogelan?  Why did you not tell me what you were planning?” he said, his voice still velvet.

Solas could feel the press of spirits seeking to follow him and observe this confrontation.  By sheer exercise of will, he kept Rogelan’s dream free of spirits and demons.  Except for him.

Rogelan swung her legs over the ledge of the embankment, dangling her feet.  She must have been a small child when her brother was killed. But in this dream, she still bore the weight of her life- every scar and line still marked on her skin. 

“Didn’t I, my lord? Didn’t I pray every night, just like my gran taught me?  Mythal for justice, Elgar’nan for vengeance, Fen’harel for trickery.” 

“Rogelan. Nettie.  This was not what we discussed.  This was not my plan.”

“Aye.  It was mine.”

She finally turned and looked up into his many eyes. 

“It’s not as though you were really real, my lord.  You’re not a person.  You’re a dream.  You’re the wishing in our hearts.  We’re Fen’Harel.  We all are. It might have started with me, but all of us’re part of it now.   We’ll get every chevalier in Halamshiral, and then maybe the dead’ll finally rest.” Her watery blue eyes looked into his trustingly. 

Solas’ heart sank. There was no fixing this.  He could restrict access to the replicator. He could use greater discretion in choosing his agents.  But he could not turn a heart fixed on death back towards life.

With a shimmering sigh, he drew power through the Fade, as much as he could hold.  Rogelan’s mouth pursed in wonder. 

“Rogelan,” he said gently. “Would you like to see your brother whole again?” 

She nodded, looking away at the maimed lad endlessly casting his line. 

“First close your eyes,” he whispered, rising to his feet.

A few minutes later, the white wolf with blood on its muzzle padded sadly through the ring of spirits and back to Skyhold.  

* * * 

Merrill didn’t show for her meeting with Shepard and Morrigan.  Leliana had received word of an elven temple far to the south which was being scouted by Corypheus’ red Templar agents.  Shepard wanted to plumb the knowledge of her new resources on the ancient elves before committing troops that were still desperately needed for peacekeeping in eastern Orlais. 

It wasn’t as though that discussion had to take place in Shepard’s chambers, though, so Shepard took the dark-haired witch with her to search out the Dalish elf.  Quite contrary to her plan, Shepard found that she liked Morrigan. The woman’s clear distaste for social niceties conformed to Shepard’s own preference towards getting down to business.

Varric was down in the main hall near his writing desk, but instead of turning drafts of his account of the Inquisition (it couldn’t be worse than the Shepard VI, regardless of title), he was pacing near the exit to the guest quarters over the garden. 

When he saw them, he grimaced, putting his hands on his hips nervously and then letting them hang at his side again.

“Everything ok, Varric?” Shepard asked.  She hoped that Bianca and Hawke hadn’t had that long-anticipated catfight, if only because she didn't want Sera to win that bet. 

“I don’t know, Herald,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his long-broken nose nervously.  “Carver came down to dinner last night and said Merrill wasn’t feeling well, and he wanted to get a healer up to see her.  Then he woke up Hawke early this morning and said she’d better come too.  I haven’t seen them since then.” 

Shepard wasn’t familiar with the particular sadness that grabbed the back of her throat, but her general experience with the emotion made her grab on to Varric’s shoulder and squeeze it.

“Really sorry to hear that, Varric.  Do you think I should…?” Shepard said, looking up in the general direction of the guest chambers.

“Maybe?  Shit, I don’t know about this stuff,” Varric said. “The last birth I attended was my own.” 

“When was the child expected to be born?” Morrigan asked, her voice neutral.

“Spring, I think,” Varric said, scuffing the floor with his boot.  

Morrigan gave Shepard a significant look.  It was only the first week of winter.  Shepard didn’t know much about this stuff either, but she knew that likely meant that any birth today was not likely to be a happy event, but a tragic one.  

Varric caught Morrigan’s silent message, and his mouth thinned a bit more. 

“I’ll grab the new medical supplies from the Undercroft,” Shepard said soothingly.  “Maybe there’s something I can do.”

She had no confidence that would be the case at all.  She’d never trained as an EMT even, let alone some specialty that would let her assist a pregnant woman in distress. 

“I might assist as well,” said Morrigan.  “As I believe the Inquisitor’s abilities in healing have not yet returned.  My own talent in such matters is small, but I do have some singular experience in birthing children.” 

Shepard loaded up on IV fluids and gauze, not really knowing what might be needed, and walked up the stairs to the room Josephine had placed Hawke’s brother and sister-in-law in. 

“I have heard that the father is a Grey Warden, is that true?” Morrigan asked, just before they reached the landing. 

“Yes,” Shepard said, stopping.  “Is that relevant?”  

Morrigan got a distant, slightly sad look in her eye. 

“Perhaps,” she said, cryptically.

Carver was sitting against the wall, just outside of the cracked door to his quarters.  The big man was slumped, head in his hands.

“Ser Carver?” Shepard asked, hesitantly.  She hadn’t really spoken to the man yet, past their introduction.  He was working with Bianca on some inquiry regarding red lyrium. She knew that he and Hawke had a strained relationship, if Varric’s book was to be believed. 

He turned his head when he heard them coming, then jumped to his feet.

“Do you think you can help, then?” he said, hope lighting up his features.  “Thank the Maker.” 

 “I don’t- I’m sorry, Carver, I haven’t heard exactly what’s wrong, yet.  I just came to see if there’s anything I can do.”

Carver nodded at the equipment bundled in her arms. 

“What’s that?”

“IV fluids, antibiotics- medicine from my time,” Shepard said.  “Generally useful treatments.” 

“Go in, then,” he said urgently.  “And quickly.”  He slid back down the wall to resume his vigil, teeth pressed tightly together. 

Shepard sucked in a breath when she cracked the door open. 

The chamber was well-lit, thanks to Bianca’s lightbulbs.  But the bright white light made the contrast between Merrill’s pale, taught skin and her vallaslin even more stark.  The woman was lying on her back in the bed, sweat sticking her linen shift to her body even though the room was cool, almost cold.  Hawke was seated next to the bed, holding one of Merrill’s hands in a bruising clench. 

The healer was an elderly woman with a neat cap of iron-grey curls and skin as lined and dark as oak bark. She was crouched at the foot of the bed, partly obscuring Shepard’s view of Merrill’s lower half.  But the wadded, crimson-soaked rags on the floor and the smell of blood, like dirty copper, sank any hopes in Shepard’s heart for Merrill’s child. 

Morrigan looked in over Shepard’s shoulder, then slowly shut the door behind them.  

Hawke turned her head and looked at the two of them with eyes which had already sunk into purple hollows in her face, then winced away at their expressions. 

“Merrill,” she said softly. “The Inquisitor and the witch are here to see you.”  

Merrill’s eyelids fluttered open. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said vaguely.  “I should have let you know I couldn’t come today.  Ir abelas.” 

“Not at all, Merrill,” Shepard managed to croak out.  “I just came to see if I could help.”

Hawke looked to the healer for an answer.  The woman shook her head. 

“The child must come soon, or we will lose both,” the healer said.  “I do not understand the source of the bleeding, but there is no way for me to contain it until the babe is out.”

Merrill flinched and closed her eyes again, shutting them tight. 

“You don’t know that,” she muttered. 

Hawke clenched her jaw.  

“Merrill, I’m doing all I can, but it’s not enough.  We’re not losing you both!” 

“You don’t know you’ll lose either of us, now do you?” the elven woman snapped at her.  

Shepard looked helplessly down at her equipment.  “Maybe I can start an IV line? If she’s losing blood, that would help, I think,” she said hesitantly. 

“It is just postponing the inevitable, until she allows me to speed the labor,” the healer said, clearly out of patience. 

“If I might examine her?” Morrigan asked, stepping out from behind Shepard, dark velvet skirts rustling as she moved. “My own pregnancy was…complicated.  I may have insight.” 

Merrill did not move to stop her, and Hawke gestured helplessly. 

Morrigan pulled a chair from the opposite side of the bed, and sat down at Merrill’s side.  She placed a hand very delicately on the mound of Merrill’s stomach, allowing it to rest there for several minutes.  Her eyes closed.  The only sound in the room was the breathing of the five women within it. 

A brief shimmer enveloped both her and Merrill, just a faint gleam of white light that danced along their bare skin. 

The corners of Morrigan’s mouth tilted down. 

“The taint is too strong in the child.  It cannot be born,” she finally said, her words dropping like stones from her mouth. Hawke bit down on her knuckles, squeezing her face tight and Merrill’s hand tighter.  A noise that might have been the start of a sob emerged from her throat. 

“The pregnancy would not have lasted this long, but someone has…”  Morrigan looked at Merrill with a faintly disapproving expression. “You should not have done it, child,” she said.  “It has almost cost your own life to feed it.” 

“I’m not a child,” Merrill said stubbornly.  “I know what I’m doing.”

“What?” said Hawke, lifting her head, eyes narrowing on Merrill.  “Merrill, it’s never a good thing when you say that.”  She paused.  “You didn’t use…”

“And so why shouldn’t I use blood magic?” Merrill blurted.  “It’s my own blood, isn’t it, and why wouldn’t I try to save my own baby?” 

Shepard’s head was jerking back and forth between the participants, and she didn’t understand what they were saying. 

Morrigan’s gaze was now angry, and her brow furrowed.  “How long has your man been a Warden?  Five years, more?”

“Ten,” said Hawke.

Morrigan shook her head. “Far too long to father a child. Which you knew.  What have you done?”

“I thought I could…well, I’m not a Warden, am I?  I cleansed the Eluvian.  It wasn’t much of a taint.  It’s Carver, Hawke! He’s good.  How could our baby be…”

Hawke let go of Merrill’s hand and curled her own both into fists.  She looked like she wanted to hit something, but she didn’t know who. 

“Did Carver know?  No, wait, don’t tell me, it’s none of my business. After all, I made him a Warden. It’s my fault if you go back to the beginning.”  She gave a harsh croak of a laugh.  “He’ll blame me anyway.  More if we can’t save you.  Merrill, why?  Why did you want to put us all through this?”

Merrill pushed up herself up more upright.  Her lips were quivering in strain.

“I really thought it would work,” she said in a small voice. “And when I knew it…when I knew it wouldn’t…I just wanted to pretend a little bit longer.  That I had a family again.”

Hawke stared at her for a minute.  The healer was looking at them both with the kind of impersonal sadness common to her kind, and Morrigan’s expression was more sympathetic than Shepard had known the witch to be capable of. 

Tears did, eventually, begin to well out of Hawke’s eyes. 

“You’re always my family, Merrill,” Hawke said.  “Please don’t die.  I can’t bury another one of you. I can’t.”  

Merrill was biting her lower lip so hard that Shepard could see a little sheer of red well across her small, white teeth.  The muscles across her abdomen contracted violently. 

“There’s nothing you can do, Morrigan?” Shepard whispered to her. 

Morrigan decisively indicated no, sweeping to her feet.

“It’s the darkspawn taint, but without the Grey Warden ritual to hold it in check.  Much longer, and it will take mother and child both. But you understand that now?”

She was addressing Merrill, not Shepard. 

Merrill slumped to the bed and nodded helplessly. 

“Will you still…can I still hold him after?”  she said in a small voice.

The healer opened her mouth to object, but Hawke cut her off.

“Whatever you want, love,” Hawke growled, taking up Merrill's hand again.  

Morrigan tugged on Shepard’s sleeve, led her out.

“That will be no kindness,” Morrigan said, once the door was shut behind them. 

Chapter Text

It was a little less than an hour into the day’s War Council meeting, remarkable only because it was Josephine’s first day back.  They were all trying to be very casual about it; nobody said anything when Josephine retrieved a stack of reports from Cassandra and began to flip through them in her usual authoritative tones.  While Halamshiral was calm, for the time being, pockets of violence were beginning to flare in alienages across Orlais, with even a few reports beginning to trickle in from Nevarra and Ferelden of the same.  Shepard personally thought this was inevitable, but the War Council was concerned about the diversion of resources that might otherwise have gone to the campaign against Corypheus.  

The issue of the succession had been temporarily tabled until the Council of Heralds could be reconstituted.  Josephine theorized that if Duke Bastien was in as poor health as was assumed, the nobility were simply waiting out his passing so that they could elect his son, rather than pay for two coronations in so short a period of time.  Shepard wished that the discussion on Josephine’s first day back could have been less ghoulish, but when was the Inquisition not dealing with some crisis? 

Their conversation was interrupted by a firm rapping at the door.  They all looked at each other, trying to determine if anyone were expecting a message.  The list of acceptable reasons to interrupt this meeting was very compact, and began with “Corypheus” and ended with “high dragon.”  After nobody else moved to open the door, Cullen flushed red with anger and stomped over to get it himself.  For the messenger’s sake, Shepard hoped that the castle truly was on fire. 

“What?” Cullen snarled at the green-hooded soldier. 

Shepard couldn’t quite hear the mumbled response, but the man’s eyes were wide and frightened, and he was casting significant looks at Leliana and Josephine before stammering out his answer.  Cullen cast a startled look over his shoulder, then edged both his own body and the solder’s out the door before pulling it firmly shut behind him.

“I wonder what that could have been?” asked Leliana, frowning after him.   She gathered herself.  “I suppose we could discuss some of the winter gear requisitions we’ll need in the next couple of weeks.”

“Cullen should really be here for that,” said Shepard.  “You know what?  I’m going to go see what that was.  I’ll come right back and let you know whether we should just table this for tomorrow.” 

“Of course, Inquisitor,” said Leliana, relieved. 

Cullen always made a stir when stomping through the main hall in a mood, so it wasn’t hard to find a bystander to point her to where he’d gone.  The lower courtyard, by the stables, apparently. 

Once Shepard got down the stairs by the old infirmary grounds, she saw a number of Cullen’s soldiers trying to establish a perimeter around the old stable building.  Various guests of the Inquisition were milling outside the area, gesticulating in some kind of excitement.  There was nothing obviously wrong- no fire, no dragon, no screaming Qunari horde.

Shepard pushed through the crowd, looking for Cullen.  She finally spotted him standing inside the former barn, hands in fists, looking up with an inscrutable expression. 

She approached, and he flicked his eyes at her once to acknowledge her presence, but didn’t speak a word.  Coming to his side, Shepard turned and followed his line of sight. 

She saw his boots first, dangling in mid-air.  There was still a great deal of tension on the rope, so they turned from side to side a bit, completing perhaps a 30-degree swing.  Back and forth. 

Blackwall’s hands weren’t tied.  Nobody had pushed him.  He’d put the noose around his own neck, tied the rope to the main rafter, and jumped. Now he hung there, suspended in death, but thankfully visible only from inside the barn. 

He must not have been there long, but death was never beautiful, this one especially unkind to the man’s corpse. 

“Andraste’s mercy,” Cullen eventually breathed out, the words sounding sodden in his mouth. 

Shepard couldn’t think of an appropriate epithet for the moment, and remained silent. 

“I wish I’d…”  Cullen said, beginning to think of some reason this represented a failure on his part, rather than Shepard’s. 

“Can it, Commander,” Shepard snapped.  “This isn’t on you.”  She sighed, looking at where the rope was looped around the heavy beam. 

“I’ll close the building. Get some people in here to…cut him down, I guess,” Cullen said unhappily. 

Shepard waved the suggestion away. 

“I can get up there and unwrap the rope.  Stand below to catch him.  It’s the least we can do.  No need to get some other poor bastard involved in this,” she said. 

Cullen nodded, still reeling. 

Shepard walked up the stairs, eyeing the ceiling beams and the ledge.  It occurred to her that these must have been Blackwall’s final steps as well. He’d evaluated the drop, the strength of the wood.  Stood where she was standing. 

She didn’t have to lean out over the drop, but she ended up climbing up on top of the beam, which was grimy with dust and age and the droppings of centuries’ worth of birds. It was filthy and it made her throat close up in revulsion, but she welcomed the physical exertion of sliding to where the rope was tied tight, the prickle of the rough fibers on her fingers, and even the splinters lodging in her wrists when she had to take her belt-knife out and saw through the rope.  The tension in the cords eventually gave way, and Shepard heard, rather than saw, Cullen catching the big man’s body as he fell. 

By the time she was done shimmying backwards off the ceiling support, Cullen was already laying Blackwall’s body out on the floor and trying to arrange his limbs in some semblance of dignity.

Shepard did her best to wipe off the grime from her face and front with some straw baled in the corner, but then two white rectangles caught her eye downstairs on Blackwall’s former desk, tucked half-beneath a wooden griffon statue. 

Cullen saw her pluck out the two sealed envelopes. 

“Ah, I saw those when I came in,” he said hesitantly.  “I didn’t open them.  One’s addressed to you, the other to Lady Josephine.”

“Josie?” Shepard said, raising her eyebrows. 

Cullen rubbed the back of his neck.  “I don’t really know about that, but I saw him bring her flowers, once.”  

“Oh,” Shepard said softly, looking at the messages in her hands.  “Do you want to read mine?” 

“It’s up to you,” Cullen said, not meeting her eyes.  

Cursing herself for a chickenshit coward and every other name she could think of, Shepard ripped hers open, wishing she had any way around it. 

The letter was lengthy and formal in tone.  The majority of it was a full confession of the life, deeds, and crimes of one Thom Rainier, from his time as a chevalier to his impersonation of Warden Blackwall to his work for the Inquisition.  Shepard was beginning to feel her neck muscles unclench in relief until she came to the final paragraphs, which addressed her personally for the first time. 

We never really spoke much, you and I, and I can’t say I regret that, for how this ends.  But you trusted me with your soldiers, and so I thought I would owe you an explanation, at least.  I appreciate what you tried to do, getting me out of jail, but you can’t set me free. You see I made a promise to Orlais, and I made that promise first.  Now Orlais wants my death.  It’s true I made a promise to the Inquisition too, and you apparently want my life, but I just can’t reconcile the two.  In the end, I decided I had to fulfill my first promises or I could never trust myself to fulfill any others.  I could never be good enough to help the Inquisition until I fixed the first mess I made.  I’m paying the first debt first. 

You might think of giving my job to Krem- he’s a good lad. 

Sorry, Inquisitor.  Give my stuff to Sera, if she wants it.

Captain Thom Rainier

“I didn’t know they were friends,” she said.  

“Who?” asked Cullen. 

“Blackwall and Sera. Rainier, I guess.” 

“I didn’t either,” Cullen said.  They both paused for a moment as Cullen read through the letter.  “Maker’s breath.” 

Shepard straightened her shoulders, tried to gather her wits. 

“Should we give this to Josie?” she asked, trying to sound professional. 

Cullen grimaced.  “We have to, don’t we?”  

Unable to come up with a reason not to, Shepard left Cullen to see to the arrangements and trudged back up to the War Room.  She’d already been gone longer than she had expected, and she half-hoped they would be gone and she could delay this for longer.  Worse if she heard from someone else, she supposed.  From a stranger. 

Although her feet felt like lead weights by the time she reached the door, Shepard resolutely pushed in, finding the two women still there, chatting casually about some visiting nobles from Antiva.  

Twisting the paper slightly in her hands, Shepard gave as brief an account of what she had found that morning as she could. Josephine’s face was very shocked, but very still, her grey eyes unwavering on Shepard’s face.  

When Shepard reached the end of her recitation, she held out the other sealed envelope to Josephine.

“And he left this message for you. I haven’t read it.”

Josephine looked at Shepard’s extended arm for several moments.  She hesitantly lifted her left hand, and it trembled a bit.  The healers said her right hand might never recover full function.  Josephine had been practicing her penmanship with her left, already producing script far beyond Shepard’s abilities, though she had pronounced herself still dissatisfied with the results. 

Josephine’s hand did not close the last few inches before she dropped it back to her lap.  She turned away.

“I’m sure it is of no importance, Inquisitor.  Cassandra can review it, if she wishes.  After all, I am the heir and sole remaining daughter of House Montilyet.  What could a disgraced army captain have to say for my eyes only?”

At Leliana’s subtle gesture, Shepard stuffed the letter back in her belt.  She’d put it away for Josephine.  Perhaps she would change her mind. 

Josephine rose, her face calm and cold as the winter morning.  

“If you’ll pardon me, Inquisitor, I must review the arrangements for the visit of Grand Cleric Marcelline.  Until tomorrow, then?” 

* * * 

Solas heard Shepard’s entrance before he saw her.  He was up on the scaffolding, a bowl of yellow pigment in his hands, adding a bit of detail-work to the decorative border around his depiction of the events at the Winter Palace.  He knew the sound of her steps- few people entered his rotunda while he was working, and nobody else wore house slippers with ethyl vinyl acetate soles on this world.  

Although his entire body tensed to focus on her movements, he did not stop his painting, and waited for her to speak.  He thought for a moment that she might simply lie down on the couch to watch him work. The way she used to.  Her footsteps hesitated below him.  He shook a little ochre into the bowl, then dabbed it at the jagged line representing the blast.  

When he heard Shepard turn to walk back out of the room, though, he put down his paints and cleared his throat.

“Sorry,” she said curtly. “I didn’t realize you were busy.” 

“It is unimportant,” he said quickly.  “How can I assist you?”

She blinked a few times. 

“Assist me?  Solas, I thought you were-  that we were-“ 

Something in his expression made her stop and close her eyes, a flash of pain shooting across her face like a comet before it was gone and she clenched her teeth.

“Fuck it, got my orders,” she said.  “Never mind.”  

He caught her by the arm before she could leave. 

“Shepard,” he said, in a more familiar voice. “Vhenan, I…” he trailed off, unsure of where to start.

She turned back, her lovely face uncertain.

“Solas, it’s ok to not be ok.  God, I know that.  Just- you can be not ok with me, you know?  If that makes any sense.” 

He tried, with limited success, to smile at her.   She gave a short little laugh.

“This?  This not talking thing?” she gestured between the two of them.  “It is not on.  I may not be good at the talking thing, but this is worse.”  

All he could do is look at her, and keep his hand on her arm.  She was so beautiful, and her face was so unhappy, and he couldn’t think of a thing he could do to help. 

“Where are you going?” he asked impulsively.  “Please, let me go with you.  Perhaps if we can accomplish something together to aid the Inquisition, it may soothe both our minds.” 

One corner of her mouth twitched down.  “I’m about ready to give someone else a crack at this Inquisitor business.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been jacked up by recent events.” 

“I disagree,” he told her, cupping both her shoulders.  “You are not responsible for the evil in this world.  That you have taken a cause to repair it is remarkable.   I cannot imagine anyone else could have done better.” 

“You can’t imagine that different world?” she asked.  “I can.” 

She sighed, rubbing her cheek with one fist. 

“I’ve got the communicator parts.  Don’t know what we’ll find when we turn it on.  But I figured I should bring a few other people along if there’s going to be a kind of first contact.  Settled on Cassandra and Leliana.  But I feel bad trying to speak on behalf of an entire world.  I mean, nobody here elected me.  And my commission is ten thousand years out of date.  What if my orders were supposed to change, and I never got them?” 

“Then you do your best with what you have,” he told her firmly.  “You cannot do more than that.”  He hesitated.  “Shepard, are you certain you should turn that machine on?  However reprehensible the colonists may have been, they cut off contact with your people for a reason.  Are you certain you have thought this through?” 

“I have,” she said quickly. “I can’t fix this world myself. It’s too big.  There’s too much broken.  The Blight.  The racism. The tech.  After all, I crashed. Nobody could have thought I would do this without backup, or after this much time had passed.  I was supposed to get help from the Andromeda Initiative to do whatever I have to do here. It may be late, but I’m going to rendezvous with my people and find out what the hell the mission is.” 

He didn’t have a response to that- couldn’t have a response to that- so he agreed, and grabbed the pack he stored beneath his desk.

Leliana and Cassandra were already waiting at the gates with horses.  They didn’t object to Solas’ presence or register any surprise, but he caught the spymaster shooting him covert glances.  He was certain that she had agents reporting his movements to her. Certain because some of them also reported to him.  In either event, she knew he had not been in close company with the Inquisitor since they returned from Halamshiral. 

The Viking was as they had left it.  The sun was already behind the western peaks, but Shepard told them to set up camp while she worked on repairs. 

As setting up camp was as simple for him as dumping his pack on a patch of reasonably rock-free ground, he followed her into the ship to watch her work. 

She visibly relaxed when she had her omni-tool on and engaged with the ship. This was obviously a familiar task for her.  She told him the names of a few of the metal tools she was using for the task, and he acted as her assistant while she told him stories involving similar repairs. He hadn’t heard the one about rescuing a turian general from Glyph, and eventually he relaxed against a blank panel to the sound of her voice. 

“That should do it,” she said after less than an hour’s worth of work.  “Would you grab Cass and Leliana?  It’s time to turn it on.” 

When they were all assembled behind her, she squared her shoulders and put on a look of resolution. 

“Moment of truth, guys,” she said, palming one last display.  Her screen began to display green text in that ancient Tevene script she used. 

“Let’s check locally first,” she said.  “Scan for radio, cellular, satellite.  Ok, there’s nothing, that’s what we expected.  Nobody on this planet has a secret space age transmitter.  I’m going to open it up to Alliance signals.”

Her fingers danced across the screen. 

“I don’t have the exact frequencies, but I remember some of my own codes.  I’ll try those.”

None of them could tell what exactly she was doing, but the background hum of static did not change as she swiveled virtual knobs and touched different parts of the display. 

“No Alliance signals. I’m going to just start scanning a wider band to pick up any friendlies.” 

Cassandra shifted her weight a bit.  Leliana continued to watch the screen over Shepard’s shoulder.  He would bet that she had already learned to read Shepard’s language.  It would be out of character for the spymaster to leave a known code unbroken.  

He watched Shepard. Her face was calm and intent. 

“It’ll take about an hour to run through this range manually, since the VI is down.  Why don’t you guys get dinner.  I’ll tell you when I find something,” she said.

After a few minutes, Leliana and Cassandra took her up on her suggestion, walking back outside to get a fire going and some of their prepared rations turned into stew.  

He maintained his position seated on the floor, looking up at Shepard where she sat at the controls. After a few more minutes, he reached out and wrapped one hand around her ankle, hoping that his touch might anchor her while she clicked her display again and again, and the hissing sound of the static did not change. 

She leaned forward and placed both hands against the wall, thinking.

“Nobody is broadcasting,” she said quietly.  “Not in the range we ever used.”

He rubbed his thumb over the arch of her foot, unsure what to say.   

“It has been a long time,” he said eventually.  “Perhaps no one thought there was anyone left to hear on this planet.”

She nodded.  “I’ll try sending out a signal myself.  See if anyone responds to a hail.  You should get some sleep.  This will take a while.”

“I will be fine here,” he told her.  She inclined her head in the briefest motion of acknowledgement. 

“Ok, I’m recording a message.”  She pressed a different place on the screen. 

“Pan-pan pan-pan pan-pan. This is Lieutenant-Commander Evelyn Trevelyan, retired, of the Systems Alliance ship the Viking.  I have crashed on Messier object 31.48956d, local name ‘Thedas.’ Requesting rendezvous and extraction to the Nexus by any friendly force.  Over.”  

She waited another moment while she listened to the static, then turned a dial.  The message played again, faintly muted.  She clicked a few more buttons and leaned back.

“It’s going to go through the whole spectrum now,” she said. 

“Will the ship tell you if someone replies?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” she said softly, looking out the hatch to where Leliana and Cassandra were already tucked into their bedrolls, asleep.  “I’m just going to stay up and wait for it.” 

Solas went back outside into the frigid night air to retrieve his pack.  It would be much warmer next to the fire with Leliana and Cassandra.  But he returned to the Viking.  He unrolled his sleeping mat on the hard metal floor, and pulled his sheepskin tunic more tightly around himself.  He would be here for this.  For her.  He lay down so he could see Shepard’s screen, and listened to her whisper the same message in her native tongue over and over, the entire night long, until sleep pulled his eyes all the way shut shortly before dawn. 

Chapter Text

The first morning that Leliana arrived at her chambers before dawn, Josephine nearly objected. While certain allowances might be made for exigent circumstances, Leliana knew that social calls were not made among members of polite society before breakfast.  Of course, Josephine would never force a stranger to Orlais’ rigid rules of politesse to comply with them, but everyone knew that she did not sparkle before she had her first cup of coffee, didn’t they?  

Not that coffee was within her abilities, that first morning.  Making coffee required that Josephine first kindle a fire in her fireplace and boil water.  And she had broken her flint and steel the first time she attempted to kindle a fire for herself using her left hand, and was too embarrassed to ask for a replacement, since there was already quite too much of ‘Poor Josie’ going around Skyhold. Leliana knew all this, and yet here she was, lantern in hand, cool smile in place, asking if she could come in and discuss a few matters if Josephine was not too busy?

Of course, Leliana knew that Josephine would never point out a breach of etiquette to her, since that would itself be a breach of etiquette, and thus they were at an impasse until Josephine wrapped her dressing-gown around her long, lace trimmed nightgown (which was dragging a bit on the floor, because it buttoned up the back and Josephine couldn’t do buttons anymore) and invited Leliana into her dark chambers as though it were tea-time and Leliana were an honored guest. 

No matter how transparent Leliana was, Josephine was bound by their unwritten rules to say nothing so long as Leliana ignored them as well.  If Leliana had said, “oh, goodness, it is earlier than I thought,” Josephine would have instantly agreed.  If Leliana had said  “oh, my dear, it is obvious you are not expecting visitors,” Josephine could have concurred and rescheduled the conversation.  If Leliana had said, “my darling friend, this seems to be too much for you, shall I arrange for a carriage to Val Royeaux, or perhaps a ship to Antiva City?” Josephine could have embraced that truth and quit Skyhold and the Inquisition both.  

But instead, Leliana remarked that it was rather dark, and lit Josephine’s candles with her own, then mused that she was cold, and built up Josephine’s fire, then confessed that she was thirsty, and started boiling water to make tea for herself and coffee for Josephine.

And she kept a polite mask on her face the entire time.  So Josephine did as well.  Leliana had a perfectly inane piece of intelligence about an affaire developing between a younger son of the ruler of Hasmal and the captain of his father’s personal guard, but Josephine was powerless to object so long as Leliana kept up the charade that her visit was about the need to obtain Josephine’s opinion regarding the letter Leliana was drafting to the boy’s elder sister. 

Similarly, when Leliana ran a fingertip along the haphazard snarl that Josephine’s hair had become and cooed about how lovely her curls were, and asked whether she could play with it, Josephine had no choice but to comply.  Leliana announced herself overjoyed at the opportunity to play lady’s maid, and once finished arranging Josephine’s hair in its formerly-typical chignon, insisted upon laying out Josephine’s favorite silk tunic, then assisting Josephine with its buttons.  The shapeless wool jumper Josephine had worn for several days in a row was vanished into a mending basket. 

Then Leliana quickly pressed Josephine on a few items of actually important correspondence which remained pending.  They both sweetly agreed that it would be convenient for a Tranquil scribe to visit Josephine after dinner to take dictation for the letters.  Josephine gritted her teeth, and sternly warned herself against anything that might be called a sulk when she walked down to the War Council meeting with Leliana, properly attired and fortified with caffeine for the first time since the Winter Palace.

She might have forgiven the entire episode had it not occurred again the next day.  And the day after that.  And every day following.  They now had a routine, completely against all the rules of polite society, whereby Leliana arrived unasked and unwelcome at Josephine’s door each morning, ruthlessly and callously insisting on doing everything that Josephine could no longer do for herself, without offering Josephine the slightest opportunity to politely refuse. 

It finally came to a head the day before Leliana left with the Inquisitor and Seeker Pentaghast to attempt communication with Shepard’s people.

Leliana was gently combing out Josephine’s curls, a satin ribbon dangling from her knuckles and tickling the back of Josephine’s neck.

“…and I hope you can see to the preparations for the expedition to the Arbor Wilds while I am gone. Cullen has the supply requisitions well in hand, but you know he is not thinking of who we will pass along the way.  He would send hundreds of soldiers marching through the fields of a number of influential nobles and not so much as inform them who we are, much less offer restitution.  Also, would you mind checking in with Dagna on those ‘radios?’ The Inquisitor said they will be absolutely vital if we are to approach Corypheus’ forces with less than a full company…”

“Yes,” Josephine interjected.  “Yes, I do mind.”  

Leliana stopped combing.

“Pardon?” 

“I do not wish to consult with the artificer regarding the radios,” Josephine said stiffly.  “And I wish you would not go with her to that ship of hers.  Nothing good will come of it.” 

Leliana scooted out from behind her and tentatively perched next to her on Josephine’s bed.

“Josie…” she began hesitantly.

Josephine shook her head firmly, loose curls whipping her neck. 

“I am not a child,” she insisted.  “Nor am I attempting to shirk my duty.  But I do not believe you have paused to think about this, Leliana.  You have not stopped!  A year ago, you were arranging a conclave for the Most Holy to stop the chaos the fall of the Circles caused.  And where do we find ourselves now?  We are no better.  Perhaps we have made things worse!” 

“You cannot blame the Inquisitor for the works of Corypheus, the Qunari, this Fen’Harel…” Leliana began.

Josephine was done with politeness. She would say her piece.

“I believe she is a great woman.  I believe she does what she thinks is right.  But she is not one of us, Leliana.  She is not even from Thedas.  It is not her world that she risks.” 

“Josie,” Leliana said, brushing her fingertips through Josephine’s hair affectionately, though her face was gently sorrowful, “We have to take that risk if we want to make anything better.”

That gentle touch broke through some skin of ice holding back the terrible, raging fury of Josephine’s grief.  It poured out of her, clawing and grasping.

“Perhaps someone with more to lose should make that decision,” Josephine said viciously. “You do not have a family to consider. You have never been in love.”

Leliana reared back as though she’d been slapped, her face pale and blue eyes almost watering. Leliana thought Josephine did not know what she did for the Inquisition.  Josephine knew.  She knew about the daggers, and the quiet poisons, and the shuttered breaths. She thought Leliana immune to it.  But seeing her friend’s face, Josephine realized that Leliana never expected the dagger at close range.

Leliana stood, taking her combs and ribbons in hand.  Her knuckles were white around them.  

“That doesn’t mean I never wanted those things,” she said, with quiet dignity.  She would have left Josephine alone then, but the hot lance of shame in her stomach spurred Josephine to stand up quickly and catch Leliana’s sleeve. 

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “That was very unkind of me.” Then the hot tears that had been trapped since the day Yvette died, the tears she had not let herself weep for the dead of Halamshiral, for Blackwall who died alone, for her childish confidence that all of their problems would be solved if they just spoke to each other more, for Leliana’s lost faith in the love of the Maker- all those tears started to fall. 

Leliana wrapped her arms around Josephine tightly, and they sat down together on Josephine’s bed. Leliana crooned an Orlesian lullaby and stroked Josephine’s hair, and promised her that everything would be all right.  Josephine was too old to believe that, but she allowed herself to accept comfort in those words nonetheless.  She did not know if she believed in the Inquisition, any longer, but she still believed in Leliana. 

 * * *  

Sera had been waiting all morning for the coast to be clear.  She got a fair number of dirty looks after she got tired of standing around, took the only chair (throne, whatever), and dangled her feet over the arm. The seat of power hurt her arse. No wonder Quizzy never sat in it. 

When she saw Bianca (great tits, big liar) and Harritt (not funny) leave for their lunch break, Sera struck.  She nipped on down to the Undercroft, a smile on her face and song in her heart.

Her perfect little plan of a nooner with her Widdle was a nonstarter, though, because Dagna was not alone.  Quizzy and the beefy, dumb-looking Warden (real Warden, not fake) were there with her, all wearing weird glasses, weird gloves, and weird clothes.  Doing weird things.  Sera hid her bottle of honey behind her back and tried to edge out of the Undercroft before she was seen. 

Stupid Wardens and their stupid twitchy ways, though, she was spotted before she could make a clean getaway.  Carver swiveled to look right at her and stopped whatever weird thing he was doing. 

“Sera!” Dagna squealed in excitement.  “Oh, you could help us, actually.  Can I have some blood?”

There were a lot of things Sera would do for her Widdle (and to her Widdle, and with her Widdle), but there were lines to be drawn.  Big red lines.  Made of blood. 

“Yeah, that’s a no,” Sera said, edging back to the door.  “And do I need to tell Commander Templar you’re doing blood down here? Or Cassandra?  Pretty sure you’re not allowed.”  

Blood magic was still not allowed, right?  There were an awful lot of blood mages around Skyhold, and real demons, and almost-demons, and sometimes it was hard for Sera to keep up with what was and wasn’t allowed these days.  Stupid personal property laws were sticking, but Sera felt the need to check that very day. 

“It’s not blood magic, Maker,” the big dumb Warden said, frowning.  “Dagna’s trying to figure out how the taint spreads.” 

“Heh.  Nobody is getting a good look at my taint without buying me dinner first,” Sera told him. 

“Ohh, pleeeeeease, Sera?” Dagna said.  “We need some elf blood.  For comparison.  Solas’ was full of magic.” 

Of course Elfy Glory’s blood was full of magic. It probably sparked and smelled like rainbows and sadness. 

“He’s full of something, all right,” Shepard muttered.

Oooh, trouble in paradise. Sera wondered if….no, nope.  Not going to think it.  She had a Widdle now. 

“We don’t know whether that was an elf thing or a mage thing. Or both!  We need more samples.  Like from you,” Dagna replied. 

“Piss on that,” Sera told her. 

“Well, pee works, but we should really get blood too.  We looked at Carver’s, and mine, and the Inquisitor’s, and Solas’, and the differences were so fascinating!”

Sera made a break for it at that, but the Inquisitor slammed the door shut with her mind, and she was trapped with the crazy people.

“This would really help, Sera,” the Inquisitor told her.  Quizzy wasn’t looking so fit these days, Sera had to notice.  She had big dark circles under her eyes, and she was doing that ‘I’ve given up’ thing with her hair that ladies did when they weren’t getting did. 

“What are you going to do with my blood?” she finally asked, suspiciously. 

“Oh, just look at it!” Dagna said.  “Look at it a lot of different ways.  With different machines. From Dirthamen’s temple.  He looked at a lot of blood.” 

Sera took a deep breath. “How do you get it out?  Demons?"

“Syringe,” Shepard replied. “Thank you, Sera.  We have not made much progress in discovering how Corypheus controls the taint, or even how it spreads.  Carver can feel it, but we can’t detect it.” 

Because demons, duh. 

“Why does it have to be elf blood, then?” Sera said, offering her arm out with a shudder.

“Bianca managed to shield red lyrium with magic.  Red lyrium carries the taint.  Dagna is testing whether magic is protective against the taint, or even possibly a cure.” 

“Still don’t get it,” Sera said, as Shepard plunged the needle into her arm and drew out what looked like most of Sera’s blood.

“It’s nothing more than a theory right now.  What you call magic, I think of as mass effect fields generated by element zero, eezo. I have a lot of eezo in my blood because I’m a biotic.  Dagna has almost none, and we think that’s because she’s a dwarf.  Carver is in the middle somewhere.  Solas’ blood was so full of the stuff I’m surprised he doesn’t glow.”

“Heh,” said Sera. “Guess you don’t swallow, or you would too.” 

Carver groaned. 

Shepard pulled the needle out of her arm none too gently. 

“Thank you,” she said curtly.  “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

Sera was ready to make her clean break before Widdle got any ideas about other bodily fluids she could extract and study, but something in the Inquisitor’s expression made her stop. 

“You’re…not going off it, are you, Quizzy?  Shouldn’t you be resting before we leave for the mother of all demons temple tomorrow?” she asked.  Shepard had given everyone a brand new gun when she got back from her flying ship. Sera loved her gun more than she’d ever loved a thing in her whole life, but Shepard was not as happy about a big fight against big Red Templars with lots of big guns as Sera would have expected. It was like she didn’t even know Quizzy any more. 

“I’ll be ready.  I’ve killed bigger things than Corypheus with smaller guns,” Shepard said.  But that wasn’t an answer, really. 

 * * * 

Shepard missed noise. She remembered that Tali told her once that silence was death on a spaceship.  Space was silent, and Shepard had died in space.  The Viking’s radio was silent, and the galaxy was dead.  Josephine was silent, and Blackwall was dead.  Solas was silent, and her fragile little dream of a house on a hill was dead. 

The war room was silent that night.  Cassandra was the only advisor remaining, the others opting to head to bed early so as to supervise their various departments for the departures to the Arbor Wilds the following morning.  Their military forces were largely unavailable, but with their weapons production finally reaching industrial scale, they hardly needed conventional forces. Leliana’s scouts had firearms, grenades, and incendiaries.  Josephine had turned all supply routes away from Corypheus’ forces.  There was no question the Red Templars would be defeated. The only variable was Corypheus.  Hawke swore she’d stabbed him to death two years prior, and Shepard believed that Hawke knew dead.  Shepard, of all people, knew that dead was not forever, but she had no idea what the mechanism of Corypheus’ resurrection was. 

“Maybe he’ll trade,” Shepard mused.

Cassandra startled from where she’d been making notes on a terrain map. 

“Who?” she asked.  

“Corypheus,” Shepard said. “He wants to be a god, but why? Maybe he just wants to reverse his taint, or stop looking like an asshole, or get central air conditioning for his palace.” 

“And you think you can reason with him?  After all this?” Cassandra frowned.

Shepard gave her a half-hearted grin.  “All what? He didn’t intend to explode the Conclave.  Or kill off the leaders of the mages and Templars.  Or blow up the Winter Palace.  He destroyed Haven, true, but that was an opposing military base.  I’ve managed to bring worse bad guys around to my view of the world once I figured out what made them tick.” 

“I wish I could understand your talent for striking to the heart of matters,” Cassandra said. “I always believe that I am speaking plainly, and yet I so often fail to make myself understood.”

Shepard shook her head. “It’s not your fault, Cassandra. You always say and do exactly what you mean.  It’s everyone else who makes things complicated.  You shouldn’t ever change.  Everyone else should.” 

“You do me too much honor,” said Cassandra, but she ducked her head and smiled when she said it. 

“Honor enough to go around,” Shepard said.  “We’re choking on it.”  She sighed at the scrolls and messages littering the desk.  Morrigan suggested that Corypheus sought an eluvian at the Temple of Mythal, but Shepard was unconvinced.  If Corypheus wanted into the Fade, he could just jump through a rift. There were plenty of them around. It wasn’t like a few demons would faze a giant creature made of claws and red lyrium.  There was no need for him to use an eluvian to cross the Veil.

The eluvians were not living up to Shepard’s hopes.  The crossroads were lovely, if empty, but Morrigan did not know how to open enough eluvians there to make use of them as a successful web of mass transit. Perhaps Merrill might learn to make new ones, some day.  Perhaps they could be programmed to go new places.  Perhaps her shuttle would get fixed.  Perhaps pigs would fly.  Shepard was running out of perhaps.  

Unable to come up with a more proactive plan than simply following Corypheus to the Arbor Wilds to see what he would do, Shepard bid Cassandra good night and walked up the long flights of stairs to her chambers.  Shepard changed into her oversized linen pajamas, and settled down for another long night of tossing in her big bed and not sleeping. 

Someone had been in her room before her to build up a fire, so it wasn’t completely dark and cold, but it was still empty.  Shepard considered playing some music, or maybe a vid, but decided against it. Every time she played media off her omni-tool, she had the morbid thought that she might be the last person to ever see it. 

She remembered looking up at the night sky as a child.  Her father, trying to spark his daughter’s interest in something other than contact sports and video games, told her that all of those stars were light-years away, and the sky she saw in front of her was the light from a long time before she was born.  She’d started to cry when she realized that all of those stars could be gone and she wouldn’t even know. 

They could all be gone. Thedas could be all there was. This could be all she ever got, tossing guns and liberalism and opera music at a bunch of confused children and telling them they mattered.  The Alliance should have sent a diplomat, or a colony administrator, or even a poet or something, instead of a dumb soldier who only knew how to shoot her way out of a situation and needed someone else to tell her who to shoot, and nobody was telling her who she needed to shoot here. 

Shepard hugged her pillow, and tried to will herself to sleep.  The oppressive silence was broken by the rattle of her door handle. Shepard froze.  She’d only started locking her bedroom door in the past week, once it was clear there was no longer any need to wait up for anyone to come to bed.

She padded to the door, unlocked it, and stared at Solas.  It was a little cruel of her, but she was glad he was looking as poorly as she felt.  His hair, now that it had started to grow in, was light and very curly.  It was clear that he had no idea how to manage it, and it was sticking up in some places and matted down in others.  He’d mentioned braids, but he was a long way from being able to tame his hair that way.  If she were a crueler woman, she would point him to Cullen for grooming tips. 

He should have looked ridiculous with his hair in disarray and his rumpled tunic.  Instead he looked beautiful, and uncertain, and sad. 

They looked at each other for a long minute, and he opened his mouth to speak.  Shepard found that she didn’t want to hear it that night, maybe not ever, so she left the door open and turned stiffly to walk away.  She climbed back into her bed.  She didn’t hear him move, or speak, or go back down the stairs.  So without looking, Shepard reached behind her and flipped back the covers on what had been his side of the bed.  It was the most she had in her to offer that night. 

After a long pause, during which Shepard closed her eyes and held her breath, Shepard felt the bed dip under his weight.  He scooted a little closer to her.  Shepard let out her breath in relief.

Solas cautiously wormed an arm around her and pressed his face against the back of her neck.

“I am sorry,” he said, and Shepard waited for the rest.  He seemed to be waiting too, and pulled away from her when his words wouldn’t come.

He was staring at the ceiling, his expression dark and self-loathing.  He had one graceful hand pressed to his forehead, the other wrapped protectively across his stomach. 

Shepard rolled over just enough to press her nose against his shoulder.

“Don’t be sorry,” she told him.  “That doesn’t help.  Just do better.” 

He pressed his eyes shut and nodded, throat bobbing.

Shepard found she could sleep.  She didn’t know if Solas did.  The next morning, when she woke up with the first rays of dawn, he was already awake, but still lying in her bed.  When she tugged off her shirt, then his, he let her press kisses down the length of his chest.  Let her hold him.  Let her have him (she did not deceive herself as to his involvement in the decision). But he did hold her after, as tightly as he’d ever done.   It was over all too soon.  They had to be downstairs to lead the forward march to the Arbor Wilds. 

“Shepard,” Solas called, as she started down the stairs.  

She turned to look up to him, as he bent over the railing. 

“It will all become clear. I will….it will all become clear.   We must simply destroy Corypheus first.  Then we will find a way to the future you promised.” 

She would have called him a liar, but she didn’t think it was her he was trying to deceive. 

Chapter Text

It was a slaughter. Even outnumbered by the Red Templars, the Inquisition’s forces cut them down like farmers reaping wheat at harvest. The guns shattered the red lyrium crystals fueling the Templars’ strength, the incendiaries burned their camps and scattered their supplies, and Shepard and her team waded through their lines as though the resistance did not exist. 

Vivienne had developed a clever trick to take advantage of the power of Shepard’s new guns; she crystallized enemies with ice, freezing them in place and priming them for a second blast of Shepard’s gun.  The result, when tested on a pair of ram carcasses rejected by the kitchens, was a pile of offal and meat scraps too diffuse to be collected for sausage.  The Iron Bull and Sera whooped with joy every time Solas and Shepard deployed the technique on the march through the Arbor Wilds; Solas thought a technology that killed in a way that denied an opponent any dignity even in death was an unfortunate innovation. 

“Dead is dead,” Shepard told him.  “That’s all there is.  Dead faster or slower maybe matters.  Dead pretty or not…does not.  At least this way you still see it. Toss an asteroid at a planet, you can forget what this means.  We know these people we killed used to be people.”

 Solas wasn’t sure she was still accepting comfort from him, but he reminded her that red lyrium was a slow death, and their adversaries were doomed before the Arbor Wilds campaign. There was no cure for the Blight. 

“I know,” she said, jaw clenched, staring off into the wild tangle of jungle.  “That’s why we’re here.  Maybe Mythal has some answers.” 

She turned and looked at Morrigan when she said that last.  Solas knew Shepard was frustrated at the witch’s smooth evasions when questioned as to her motives and sources of information.  Solas had taken note of the witch’s yellow eyes and formed his own suspicions.  Suspicions he unfortunately could not share with the Inquisition. 

“Do you know anything about this place, Solas?” Shepard asked him. 

Did he?  The Arbor Wilds were strange and unfamiliar, the result of eons of wild magic mutating the plants and animals into eerie new forms. The birds watched their party from overgrown trees, their eyes bright and too-intelligent.  The roots of the great oaks plunged gleefully through walls as though seeking targets for destruction.  Although it was winter, jungle ferns and bloated mushrooms proliferated in their path, and the humid pulse of all that life stuck to their faces and hands.  It was a bad place. 

He had spent years in the Temple of Mythal before her murder.  He knew its halls and galleries like a home.  He did not know what had become of it since the fall of Arlathan, but he knew it was no repository of preserved Milky Way machinery, like Dirthamen’s temple had been.  Mythal could not have hidden that much, at least, from him.  

So he dissembled to Shepard and told her the Veil was thin and dangerous here, which was true enough, and she seemed to accept his explanation.  

They reached the vanguard of Corypheus’ forces near the entrance without any sight of the creature himself.  A small party of Red Templars, led by the disgraced villain of Hawke’s acquaintance, Samson, hurried forward in the distance, undeterred. 

Great wolves flanked the entrance to Mythal’s temple, their forms stylized and primitive.  They predated his service.  The Elvhen had always looked to the wolves as protectors and guardians.   He’d been formed by that faith.  He saw Shepard consider them as they all entered the main courtyard. 

The roof and many of the statues were gone, pulled down by time and the other Evanuris, but Solas could still see the strong bones of the place, choked as they were by jungle growth.  

The petitioner’s pillars still stood in the middle of a clump of statutes of Mythal as Queen of Dragons.  Shepard approached them, arm extended to sweep the writing with her omni-tool. 

Morrigan told Shepard that the pillars told of rites that petitioners were instructed to perform to open the gates of the temple.  Solas bit his tongue over her poor translation.  

Shepard frowned again.

“What’s this bit about duty and sacrifice, then?” Shepard said, gesturing to an instruction carved into the rock. 

“You can read it?” Morrigan said, surprised.  

Shepard gave her a tight smile.  “It’s a lovely language.  Full of nuance.  Took the UT quite a while, but I think I’ve almost got it.”

She very decidedly did not look his way. Solas was unnerved that she’d gotten as much of it as she had- it wasn’t from him, since he thought he’d uttered little but curses and endearments in her presence.  The little scraps of history she’d painstakingly collected across two countries must have added up to something resembling a whole.  Remarkable.  

Morrigan pursed her lips. “I did not intend to tell you until I was more certain of the answer, but it refers to something called a ‘Well of Sorrows’ in the temple.   A treasure of Mythal offering both a boon and a burden.”

“Next time just tell me what you see and let me make the call on the quality of the intelligence,” Shepard said crisply, walking around the pillars to inspect them further.  

The magics of the rite of petition were still strong, singing as Shepard stepped across them. She knelt and pressed her palm to the floor, scanning it. 

“Nothing down there,” she reported.  “Let’s move further into the temple.”

As they climbed the long stairs- Solas’ muscle memory telling him the height of the steps, he could have made the climb with his eyes closed- the Iron Bull leaned in to Shepard and whispered, “hey boss, we’re being watched.”

She nodded, not changing the direction of her gaze.

“I know.  Hostiles?” she pitched her voice not to carry.  

“Unknown,” Bull said. “Caught a few flashes of fuck-you-shiny armor.  Gold. Not Templars.”

“Then let them watch,” Shepard said.  “If anyone still lives here, I’d love to have a nice peaceful chat with them.”

Solas wondered himself. He’d found a few hidden places where his people still lingered in uthenera, aside from those who had followed him personally into his long slumber.  Mythal’s temple had not been one of those places in his own time, but he could not say what had occurred after he raised the Veil. 

When they reached the great double doors, Shepard pressed her hand against them and turned on her omni-tool.

“Do you not wish to see what comes of following the rites of petition?” Morrigan asked her. 

Shepard grimaced. “There’s a difference between being polite and bowing to the enemy,” she said. “I don’t feel the need to do either to Mythal.”

Morrigan swallowed back any retort.  “As you wish,” she allowed. 

The doors opened.  

“Looks like Mythal hired the same architect as Dirthamen,” Sheprd said, frowning. 

Solas tried to see the temple interior through her eyes instead of the lens of his memory.  The shapes of the windows, the statues, the half-ruined mosaics- yes, those were the same.  Mythal’s temple was much richer than Dirthamen’s, as her followers were much more numerous, but there was a commonality there.  He’d never questioned it at the time, but he caught Shepard’s point that the long years that the Evanuris had ruled had given rise to a sameness in all their works.  

Shepard saw immortality as a burden, not a boon.  Her people had lived lives many multiples of those known to modern elves, but nonetheless marked by a clear arc from childhood to old age.  The Elvhen, by that token, must have achieved immortality by either by dint of Elgar’nan’s forbidden research or by exploiting the Fade in a way unknown to Shepard’s superior science. 

He had thought of immortality as a treasure he’d stolen from his people.  Had he been wrong?  Had immortality only been another cause of the decadence and eventual madness of the Evanuris? Was immortality perhaps against the shared nature of his people and Shepard’s?  Did it inexorably give rise to cruelty and immorality as the immortals sought ever stranger and more violent delights to amuse themselves? Perhaps the two hundred years Shepard claimed as her people’s allotment would be sufficient.  Perhaps his people could achieve all they could in that lifespan. 

They walked purposefully through the temple with Shepard scanning the walls and floors as they went. They saw nothing but ruined statues and additional rituals, which Shepard disdained. 

She stared up at a mosaic of Mythal holding her five swaddled children, flanked by wolves.

“Must pre-date the point where Fen’Harel locked them all in the Fade,” Shepard mused. 

“Strange that the elves did not remove the wolf statues thereafter,” Morrigan agreed.

Shepard shrugged.  “I don’t think these guys did much redecoration."  She turned to Solas. “Do you think, if I opened a rift to the Fade here, that we might see what this place looked like before it was ruined?” she asked him.

The idea was alarming, not least because he’d been a frequent visitor. 

“Yes,” he admitted. “Or you might fracture the Veil in this area entirely, allowing Corypheus to slip through.” 

She sighed.  “If we spend the night here, will you look around, at least?  I’m not finding any tech.”

He promised her that he would. 

Shepard broke the enchantment binding the doors to the petitioner's chamber, then paused when she found a host of Elvhen assembled on the other side, bows in hand. 

“Shit,” Sera whispered. “Too much elfyness in one place!” 

Solas froze in place. He recognized the faces of several of the temple warriors wearing Mythal’s vallaslin, including their leader. What had the man’s name been?  He couldn’t recall.   But he’d been present when Solas arrived too late to find the other Evanuris already gone, the temple in flames, and Mythal dead.  So he’d survived.  Solas’ rage had not been gentle, that day, and he’d blamed Mythal’s defenders before admitting that charge had been, from the beginning, his own. 

“Andaran atish’an,” their leader told Shepard.

Shepard cautiously responded in kind, not lifting her gun, though several dozen bows were aimed at her. She had little to fear from arrows in her chitinous black armor. 

“Do you speak English?” she asked him, first in Elvhen, then her own language. 

He cocked his head at her. “I do not…no, that tongue is not for me. Tell me, stranger, what brings you to this temple, using powers reserved to the gods?” 

“Perhaps introductions are in order first,” she said, not relaxing her grip on her weapon.

“I am called Abelas,” their leader told her, waving at his warriors to relax their weapons.  “I lead these defenders of the Temple of Mythal. We awoke to fight invaders, merely the latest of many.  You, though, are different from those who have come before you.  You carry familiar magic, and use it as none but the gods have ever done.  Who are you, and what is your relationship to the gods, and those who have come to despoil this place?”

“I’m Commander Shepard, Alliance navy,” she told him.  “I’m here chasing down some bad guys under the command of Corypheus.  Seen him?  Big guy, floats, red crystal in his ugly face?”

Abelas shook his head, face uncertain. 

“I do not understand,” he said.  “What is your ‘Alliance?’” 

Shepard sighed, disappointed.  “Did you ever hear about a place beyond the stars, where your gods came from?  I’m from there too.”

Abelas brow drew tight in consternation.  “You claim to be one of the Evanuris?”

“No,” Shepard said quickly. “Not at all.  But you might think of me as a…distant cousin.” 

Abelas frowned, glancing behind him. 

“You look much like any other shemlen, but I cannot deny your mastery of the powers of the gods. Do you seek the Well of Sorrows?”

Morrigan leaned forward at that, face intent.

“Depends,” said Shepard, her interest clearly piqued.  “What is it, exactly?”

“The treasure we have guarded all these years,” Abelas told her.  “The accumulated wisdom of all those who have served Mythal over many ages.” 

“Then yes,” Shepard said, with growing excitement.  “Yes, I came here hoping to find answers to my questions.  Will you share your knowledge with me?” 

“Perhaps,” Abelas said, inscrutably.  “Perhaps it is you we have awaited all this time.  You must first dispatch the invaders to the temple.  Do so, and you will be judged, and I will decide whether you are worthy.” 

At Abelas’ signal, the Elvhen warriors opened the doors to the labyrinth.  Solas could hear distant fighting within.  Samson against the other defenders, by the sounds of it. 

“Fair enough,” Shepard told Abelas, rolling her shoulders.  “See you in a few.” 

She looked back at Solas as he lingered in the chamber. The Iron Bull and Sera had already rushed ahead, guns at the ready. 

“Aren’t you coming?” she asked, confused.

“In a moment,” he said. “You are in no danger from the Red Templars.  I wish to speak to Abelas, and ascertain the dangers of the Well.”  

She nodded, her gratitude sending a lance of guilt through him. 

Solas and Abelas watched her bound forward into the temple depths, gun at the ready.

“I did not expect to see you again outside my dreams, Dread Wolf,” Abelas told him, once Shepard was out of earshot.

“My path has diverged from the one I set the last day we saw each other,” Solas told him. 

Abelas looked at him keenly, taking in his lack of vallaslin. 

“Your braids suited you better,” the man told him, raising an eye at Solas' messy hair.  

Solas never did like him much.  He looked Abelas in the eyes, gave him a smile that exposed a bit of his canines. Abelas was unimpressed.  He thought Solas would scruple to kill Mythal’s longest serving retainer, and he no longer feared Solas’ physical chastisement. There was no reason for Solas to correct that misapprehension just yet.  

“Tell me, Dread Wolf. I could ask you many questions regarding your doings for all these years, and of your new commander, and how you came to be here.  But only one is important.  Do you remain bound to the will of Mythal?” 

Solas gripped his staff harder.  If their meeting was to erupt into violence, it would be at this moment.  

“I have bound myself to the will of Jane Shepard, who you met just now,” he answered honestly.

Abelas surprised him with a small, careful smile.

“That will suffice, then. I will meet you at the Well.” 

Solas thought about that, as he jogged after Shepard and her team.  There was a hook in the bait somewhere, he was certain.  He put the matter temporarily aside as they finally caught up to Samson. 

“Hawke said you’re a grasping, greedy shitheel who couldn’t hack it as a Templar under the most lenient command in all of Thedas,” Shepard told Samson.

He sneered at her. 

“Is that supposed to shame me?” he told her.  “The Elder One has purged me of all shame.  He will make me a vessel for his glory!”

“No,” said Shepard. “Just an observation.”

Her next shotgun blast severed his head altogether. 

Shepard adjusted her gauntlets while Sera and Bull cut down the remaining Red Templars.  Solas came to stand between Shepard and the witch, still thinking about Abelas’ offer. 

“Shepard,” he said softly. “You should not accept anything from these elves until you better understand what the Well involves.  There is no reason for their aims to be congruent with your own.  They support another set of self-proclaimed gods, after all, who you have no reason to consider better than Corypheus.”

“You think?” Shepard said, head cocked.  “Maybe they’ve just been cooped up down here with nobody to tell them what to do.  The world outside the wilds is pretty shitty for the elves.  There hasn’t been a reason for them to leave.”  

“And yet so easily they offer up their greatest treasure to a shemlen?” he asked.

“Why not?” Morrigan interjected.  “You did, after all.”  He whirled upon her, but choked back the insults that flew to his lips. 

“I’ll take a closer look,” Shepard decided. 

Solas followed Shepard and the witch up the stone steps to the innermost sanctum of the temple.  In his time, Mythal had held court on a high dais. Now, a transparent pool was sunken at the top of the stairs, circled by the temple’s Eluvians.  His apprehension grew as Abelas and his lieutenants filled in behind him.

Abelas’ face was intent, almost greedy as he looked at the Well.

“What is the Well?” Solas asked him. 

Abelas tried to shrug him off.

“Knowledge,” he said. “The collected knowledge of the high priests of Mythal.”

“What else,” Solas pressed. It must have been made before he brought down the Veil, yet such magic was not familiar to him.  Mere knowledge would have been stored in the Vir Dirthara. This had to be something else.

Morrigan, of all people, closed her eyes and let her magic seep out towards the Well.

“It is their collected will. Their essence,” she said, shuddering. “Their power.”

Shepard looked at Abelas. “What will happen to me, if I absorb it?” she asked him.

“All they were,” he told her, his voice a purr of satisfaction.  “You will take it on.”

Solas felt his skin begin to prickle in horror.

“No,” he told Shepard. “You will be bound forever to the will of Mythal, as they were.”

Shepard looked skeptical. “It sounds like a Prothean beacon. I’ve handled one before.  It’s a rough ride, but I’ll get over it.” 

“No,” Solas repeated. He tried to pull Shepard to face him, instead of the Well.  “You, of all people, know that something of Mythal still walks the world.  You cannot harness yourself to her will!”

Her eyes narrowed. “Me, ‘of all people?’” she repeated.  

They were pushing against the fragile walls that he constructed against the truth, but in this moment, his terror of Shepard’s next choice overrode all caution. 

 “This is a trap,” he told Shepard.  “You heard of the temple at the same time Corypheus did.  Both of you lured here, after thousands of years, to take on this power.  It sought you, not the other way around.  You will be the one to end as the empty vessel of Mythal, rather than Samson!” 

He spoke quickly, urgently, hoping that Abelas would not intervene.  The warrior gave Shepard a slick smile, confident of his victory.

Shepard’s eyes met his. Her lovely face was serious and thoughtful.  She put her hands on his shoulders.

“I hear you, Solas. And I understand your concern. But this is my decision.  The Reapers tried for years to indoctrinate me. It didn’t work.   This risk is worth it.  This is could be my only chance to find out what the colonists did with their Reaper tech.  Why they cut off contact with the Andromeda Initiative.  How they started the Blight.  If anyone would know, it would be the high priests of Mythal.” 

She gently brushed him aside, took another step toward the Well.  His heart pounded in his throat.  His fear rose like nausea, choking him.  Everything she was, every bright and beautiful thing, every new and wonderful thing she had brought to Thedas, every gossamer plan she had made, it could all be gone.

“They did not know,” he choked out hoarsely.  She looked back at him, mildly confused, but then shook her head, determined.  Another step. 

“They did not know the answers to your questions,” he said, louder. 

The Iron Bull and Sera were shifting uncomfortably, watching him.  Abelas and the other sentinels were starting to edge in his direction.  He was out of time. 

“They did not know, because I did not know!” he shouted at last, halting Shepard.  

She finally turned. Her face was still only puzzled, not hostile.  

“What do you mean?” she said.  

Abelas’ hands fell to his daggers.

“Do not listen to him,” he hissed. “Mythal’s ‘greatest general’ fails her yet again, it seems.”

When she processed the words, Shepard’s face was soft and vulnerable for only a second before the hardened mask of the trained killer slipped back over it.  

“You are…you were…” she started.  Solas met her eyes, silent and helpless.  She looked back to the Well, her mouth twisting in derision. “I suppose I will find out in just a moment, won’t I?”  She pushed her hair out of her face.  She gripped it hard in both fists, then let it fall.  She decisively took the final step into the pool.  Solas’ mouth fell open in horror as whispers of dead servants of the Queen of Dragons began to draw near to Shepard.  

Abelas’ hand came hard around Solas’ arm, but he managed to jerk it away.  He was out of options, out of time, out of careful lies that protected himself and his heart alike. 

“No!” he yelled, letting a bolt of pure energy fly into the pool.  It unleashed the quiescent power of the Well, and a great explosion caught all those assembled on the edge, flinging them halfway down the stairs. 

Solas caught his head against the line of a stair and skidded down a few more steps, stunned. The pain and the exertion of magical energy made his head spin. 

He heard Abelas’ voice first, as the Sentinel brushed himself off and struggled to his feet.  

“Fen’Harel,” he spat. “A traitor to the end, it seems. Is there nothing you will not tear down in your vanity?”

A shadow fell across Solas’ face.  

He blinked his eyes open and saw Shepard’s dark silhouette between him and the sun.  When his eyes focused, it was on the barrel of her gun, and the long line of her arm as she aimed down on him.  

This woman, for whom he was willing to sacrifice himself and his plans for his people, did not let her hands shake as she considered him.  His semen was still in her body, and his saliva still dry on her skin, and her face was calm as she thought about killing him.   He said nothing in his own defense.  She would decide on her own whether or not she needed to pull that trigger.  She’d done it before.   He wondered whether she’d loved Kaidan Alenko when she’d shot him in the stomach.  He didn’t think it had made a difference, either way.  If he lived, maybe he’d get the chance to ask her that.

“I was too quick to bemoan the end of this world’s ancient magics, it seems,” Morrigan’s lilting voice interrupted the moment.  “A god still walks among us.  I do wonder if he is now prepared to share the fate of the others?”

Shepard turned her head and appeared to commune with her team.  

Her face was cool and professional when she looked back down at him. 

“We’ll take him back to Skyhold with us,” she said.  “And maybe then I’ll get my answers.”

She quickly spun her gun in her hands.  He couldn’t even raise his hands to object before the butt of her weapon smashed into the side of his head, and all was darkness. 

Chapter Text

Mother Giselle was fairly shocked to see them stagger out of the Eluvian chamber at Skyhold, tugging a still-unconscious Solas behind them.  The precipitous appearance of Corypheus and his dragon had cut off Shepard’s interrogation of Abelas and the other Sentinels.  Turned out her omni-tool worked just fine on Eluvians, though, luckily enough.  

Now that her team was safely evacuated back to Skyhold, Shepard was tempted to go right back through the Eluvian to the Temple of Mythal.  Just because magic didn’t keep Corypheus dead, didn’t mean bullets wouldn’t. She was willing to continue experimenting until Corypheus ran out of Grey Warden bodies to possess.  It was an avenue of research she was willing to pursue. 

The only thing that stopped her from charging back into the fight was Mother Giselle’s gentle cough of concern over Solas’ prone form.  Bull had dropped him like a sack of potatoes on the bare dirt of the garden as soon as they were safe.

“Does your companion require a healer?” Mother Giselle asked, confused.

Sera snorted. “Executioner, more like,” she said, kicking Solas in the ankle for good measure.  

Shepard resolutely looked away from her lover’s sprawled body. 

“Get me Cassandra,” she snarled at one of the wide-eyed agents milling around the courtyard.  

The Seeker came at a jog a few moments later, hand already on her sword hilt.

As the entire War Council had accompanied their forces down to the Arbor Wilds, Shepard had decided that it was not safe to leave Skyhold in Dorian’s hands this time.  It wasn’t that she did not trust him.  She did.   But leaving a Tevinter mage in charge of the Inquisition’s center of power now that it controlled the bulk of the Orlesian state might have been pushing things a bit too far, Leliana advised. Although Cassandra was a foreigner with all the subtlety of a punch to the head, the Orlesians seemed content to follow her instructions.

“Andraste’s mercy,” Cassandra gasped, when informed of the events at the Temple of Mythal.  “Did you manage to absorb anything from the Well?”

Shepard shook her head. “I don’t think so.  The mission failed.”   She grimaced, looking down at Solas.  “At least we know where the chink in our armor is now.”  

“What do you want done with him?” Cassandra asked uneasily.  “I know he was…” 

Shepard’s upper lip twisted. “Don’t we have a dungeon?  Seems like this is what it’s for.  We’ll wait for the War Council to get back before we decide what to do.” 

“I’ll assign a couple of Templars to watch him,” Cassandra sighed.  “They can keep him cut off from the Fade until we come to a permanent solution.” 

Shepard nodded. “Thank you,” she told Cassandra. There were too many people watching her. “Don’t you all have things to do?” 

The other members of the Inquisition scattered, leaving her alone with Cassandra and Solas.  After a moment, Cassandra leaned down and pulled Solas’ limp form over her shoulder.  Shepard did not help her.  She didn’t think she could touch him. 

Cassandra hesitated a bit, shifting under her burden.  “Inquisitor, I am sorry.” 

But Shepard was already walking away towards the Undercroft, and gave no indication she’d even heard her. 

 * * * 

Straw and the smell of damp stone.  Smoke from reed torches.  The dungeons of his own damn fortress.  Were there lower depths to which he could sink? 

His mouth was cottony and bitter.  Drugs. He’d been drugged.  He felt the pain in his head distantly. With a bit of groping, he found the floor.  

“Want some water?” a voice asked.  Solas cracked his eyes open and saw the Iron Bull relaxing in a chair just outside his cell. His arms were crossed across his broad chest, and one of his massive boots rested on the opposing knee. 

“Is it drugged?” Solas croaked out.  His mouth tasted like the bottom of the stones overhanging the waterfall. 

“Nah,” said Bull, nudging a canteen through the bars of the cell with his foot. 

Solas uncorked it and tried to be a bit subtle about sniffing the water within.  It smelled like dank leather.   He gave up and drank it.  

When the water hit his empty stomach, it roiled inside him.  He must have been out for some time.  Solas spat it out onto the straw and clenched his arms around his midsection. 

“Easy there, big guy,” said Bull.  “Don’t want it all coming right back up.” 

Solas wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and flopped into something resembling a sitting position. He panted a bit from the exertion. He wished he could lean back against the wall behind him, but he recalled a mason’s report that suggested that that action might lead to him topping hundreds of feet down the mountainside and bringing Skyhold along with him.

“How are you feeling?” Bull asked solicitously.

“Like I was hit in the head, dragged through an Eluvian, then dosed into unconsciousness with a decoction of ghoul’s beard and blood lotus.”

“That’s about the long and short of it,” Bull admitted.  “The Templars down the hall also hit you with a few smite effects.  Just in case.” 

Solas glared at him suspiciously. 

“I suppose you are here to interrogate me, Ben-Hassrath?”

Bull scratched his goatee.

“It’s not really my area, but being Tal-Vashoth has given me license to pursue new interests.  I’m taking up pottery, for one.” 

Solas wasn’t sure whether or not he was joking.  They stared at each other in silence.  

“I want to talk to the Inquisitor,” Solas said. 

Bull shifted, put both feet down on the floor.  He leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees, letting his hands dangle over them.

“I’m afraid that’s not happening,” Bull said.  “But if you have a few things you’d like to share with the Inquisition, I brought pen and paper, and I’ve got all afternoon.”

Solas snorted.  “I am sure you do.  Shall we tentatively schedule the saar-qamek for dinnertime?” 

“Nah,” said Bull.  “I get the feeling you want to talk. Saar-qamek’s for getting the conversation flowing.  But you want to explain all about you’ve been up to as Fen’Harel, right?” 

“Yes,” Solas said. “Please ask the Inquisitor to come down here.  She deserves answers.” 

“She does,” Bull agreed. “Let’s get to it, then.” 

Solas leaned forward, gathering some of what had made him the most feared warrior in the empire and letting it shine through the haze of despair that enveloped him.

“I will talk to Shepard,” he insisted.  

Bull sighed, and let his pen dangle limply from his fingers. 

“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” he told Solas gently. 

* * * 

“You should talk to her,” Varric said.  Hawke felt very little interest in leaving the Herald’s Rest, where she’d spent the past few weeks holed up, drinking cheap wine and harassing Sutherland’s Company. Varric had been tiptoeing around her with that pinched expression on his face like she’d gotten dogshit on her shoe and he didn’t want to tell her.  Why was he tiptoeing around her?  It wasn’t like she was the one with the dead demon baby.  Carver wasn’t getting drunk and sulking around Skyhold.  He was doing Warden-y things down in the Undercroft with Bianca.  Even Merrill was up and about, helping interrogate Leliana’s elven agents. Very, very gently.  Nothing bad had happened to Hawke.  Nothing good, sure, in a very long time, but that was life.  

“Why?” Hawke said rudely, rubbing her chest where the rough red wine was giving her heartburn. Maker’s balls, she’d never thought she’d live long enough to start feeling old. 

Varric shifted uncomfortably on the bar stool next to her.  

“I just thought that, you know, she could use some girl talk.  From someone who’s been through a …disappointment.  With someone you cared about.”

Hawke snorted, sounding like her mabari when he sneezed. 

“Oh sure.  I have wonderful advice for her about how to cope with a disappointing romantic entanglement.  Which do you think I should recommend first, ignoring him for three years, fighting a duel in his name, or stabbing him in the back?”  She animated the final suggestion with her goblet, letting the wine slosh over the cuff of her robes.  

Varric frowned at her. “I was talking about me, you harpy. About the whole betrayed in the Fade thing.  And thanks for reminding me you slept with both Fenris and Isabela, that’s going to be very awkward when we have them over for First Day.”  

Hawke wrinkled her nose at him.  “Solas didn’t have a little oopsie-daisy with a desire demon, he’s been holding back the god-thing from the Inquisitor the entire time she’s known him.  And he blew up a bunch of Orlesians!”  She pointedly ignored the gratuitous comment about Fenris and Isabela.  She hadn’t ever hidden a thing from him.  He was the one with the secret-crossbow-adulterous-lover living in the same building as them. 

Varric reached back and tugged on his ponytail in distress.

“Tiny claims Chuckles wasn’t really, totally responsible for that.  Either time.”

“Either time? Andraste’s asshole, Varric, what else did he blow up?” Hawke asked. 

“Mayyyybe the Conclave. In a sense.  It was his magic ball that Corypheus used to create the Breach. Apparently it was an accident, and he was really trying to blow Corypheus up instead.” 

Hawke groaned.  “Well, I’m the last one to criticize how someone goes about killing Corypheus, but I’m still not finding myself squarely on Team Solas for this one, honeybear.”

“Don’t call me that,” Varric countered automatically. 

They were both quiet for a minute.  Bull’s report of Solas’ interrogation wasn’t widely disseminated yet, but it was out to the Inquisitor’s inner circle, who had received it with varying amounts of incredulity. Varric apparently had not doubted anything in it.  They had, as Varric put it, seen weirder shit. 

“Alright, fine, I’ll do it,” Hawke abruptly decided, pulling her bar stool back with a loud screech. “I’m the last person to criticize great plans going all to pot.  If I hadn’t been banging my biographer, they’d probably be calling me the Dread Wolf in Kirkwall.” 

Varric chuckled.  “You think all he’s been missing is good press?”

“Also hair, honesty, and shoes, but we’ll start with a little sympathy,” Hawke said. 

She grabbed her cloak and her staff and headed out for the main keep.  Now that the Inquisition forces were starting to trickle back in, there were torches lit around the courtyard again.  It had felt very dark and cold over the past few weeks.  

In the great hall, Bianca’s lights now kept the room as bright as midday, even this late in the evening.  There were a few groups of visitors clumped in conversation, but it was mostly empty.  

Cassandra was sitting at the head of one of the long tables flanking the rooms, along with the other three members of the War Council.  They had number of reports scattered around them, but also an open bottle of wine. Their expressions were tired and unhappy.  Cassandra lifted her head as Hawke approached. 

“Champion, what can we do for you?” she asked. 

“I’m on my way up to see Shepard,” Hawke said, hooking a thumb at the other end of the room.  Cassandra grimaced.

“You are of course welcome, but she has not been accepting social visitors since her return from the Temple of Mythal,” she said. “Inquisition business only.”

“Oh it is,” Hawke said, lying through her teeth.  If the Inquisitor didn’t get her personal matters sorted, she wouldn’t be capable of making sound decisions in any other area of her life, if Hawke was any guide. “It’s…uh, something for Varric. About Kirkwall.” 

Leliana looked at her as though she saw that for the load of horseshit it was, but also had no more fucks to give that evening.  Cullen glared at her suspiciously, but Cullen was hardly an authority on talking down crazy women, now was he?

Cassandra waved her on, and Hawke clomped up the three rickety staircases to Shepard’s room. 

She banged on the door to the Inquisitor’s room, announcing herself.

There was a long silence. Hawke waited, tapping her foot. She knew that Shepard knew she was still there.  The stairs were loud and creaky.

She waited another minute. 

“Still here!” she announced, unnecessarily. 

“Come in,” Shepard finally said.

The room was dim, when Hawke entered.  Shepard was sitting behind her desk, dressed in her underclothes, lit from behind by one lamp. 

In the center of her otherwise bare desk was a small black box.

“Yes?” Shepard asked her warily. 

Hawke stared at her for a minute.  She should have written down how this conversation started.

“So, my ex-boyfriend was a terrorist too,” she eventually managed.  

Luckily Shepard thought that was funny, or at least she still knew how to make a face indicating she did. Her dark red hair was falling into her eyes, and Hawke located a knit band for it on Shepard’s nightstand and handed it over.   Shepard knotted her hair back behind her head. 

“So, have you come to weigh in on what I should do about that?” Shepard asked her, warily. 

“Just to be the voice of experience,” Hawke said, pulling a chest around to the other side of Shepard’s desk and sitting down on it.  “You know, for perspective.  Three years out, do I think I should have made him suffer first?  Or faked his death and gone on the run to have little abominations with him in the woods?  I get a lot of letters about that.”  

Shepard gave her a dark smile.  “Leliana and Josephine want to have him made Tranquil,” she confided.  “They think he can still be useful to the Inquisition that way.  And me, though they won’t say it.”

“Yuck,” said Hawke. “I’m a little surprised Cullen wasn’t all over that too, though." 

“Oh, Cullen just wants him executed outright,” Shepard said lightly, though her wounded expression didn’t change. 

“Ah, that’s my favorite Templar,” said Hawke.  “Getting soft in his old age.  And you?” 

Shepard shook her head. “I don’t see why it should come down to me again,” she said.

“Well,” Hawke drawled. “Why wouldn’t it be you?  You’re the one most affected by it.”

“Am I?” Shepard said, with a slow arch of her eyebrow.  “I dropped into all of this.  It started almost ten thousand years ago.  Solas’ fight with the other gods.  Then the Blight.  Corypheus. I came in at the end.  I didn’t live it.” 

“But you will,” Hawke pointed out. 

Shepard’s gaze fell on her little box again.  She reached over and flipped it open, releasing a small ball of glowing light. 

“This is a VI,” she said softly.  “Its name is Glyph.  My best friend sent it with me to this galaxy to tell me what happened.  Solas took it off a Templar just after the Conclave.”

“And didn’t tell you about it?  That’s shitty,” Hawke said.

Shepard nodded. “Though he didn’t know what it said. Apparently everyone back home thinks I really jug-fucked my last mission.” 

“Really?” said Hawke, leaning in to examine the glowing light.

“Yeah, I may have destroyed communications and transportation for the entire galaxy,” Shepard said. “And got my entire crew killed to boot. Liara shipped me off to this world with a new identity to try to keep me ahead of it.” 

“It’s…good to have friends?” Hawke said, trying to see Shepard’s angle. 

Shepard huffed out a silent laugh.  “I suppose that’s one way to look at it.  Thanks, Hawke.”

“My pleasure,” Hawke said. She paused again.  “I don’t see what it really changes, though.  You’re here now.  You’ve got to live with what you do with him.  That’s all.”

Shepard nodded.  “Do you regret what you did?” she finally asked. It sounded like she’d been holding that question back.

Hawke walked to the door, her usual flip answer at the ready.  But at last, she decided to give Shepard the honest answer.  The one she hadn’t given anyone else.

“Some days,” she said. “Some days I miss him.  He used to play the lute.  Badly.   He was funny.  Not many people remember that.  Some days I wish I’d never met him.   Some days I’m really pissed at him and I wish I’d killed him as soon as I realized Vengeance was in the driver’s seat.  Some days I think it was a mercy, and what he- Anders, not just Vengeance- would have wanted.  But he’s dead every single one of those days, whether it’s a day I want that or not. It just is.” 

She left Shepard with that, sitting alone in the dark, and closed the door behind her.

Chapter Text

It was Leliana’s shouting that drew Shepard’s notice. Her spymaster was hardly excitable, and her voice carried, even from several floors down. By the time Shepard made it to the Eluvian chamber, the guards had summoned Hawke and Merrill, who were tentatively contemplating a rescue mission.

“Not on your lives,” Shepard told them firmly. “If I get stuck in there, I can get myself out. You stay put.”

It would have been nice, Shepard thought, if Solas had been a little more forthcoming about the Eluvians and how they worked. Bull had been more concerned with the extent of Solas’ spy network. Professional bias, Shepard supposed. Not that there was anything preventing Shepard from going down to the dungeons and asking him herself. Nothing beyond her own disinclination to see him behind bars, anyway.

Kaidan must have felt this way the six months she spent in lockup after Aratoht, Shepard thought. He’d been right there in Vancouver, getting promoted, going for jogs, drinking with friends. Living. The way Shepard was supposed to go on living.

Shepard stepped through the shimmering Eluvian and walked out into the Fade. This stretch was only slightly nicer than the Nightmare’s domain. She looked around for any familiar faces, but the spirits she’d met on her previous trip were nowhere to be seen. Nor was the witch.

“Morrigan!” Shepard called, her voice echoing down the empty stone passageways.

“She can’t hear you. They’re far away from each other still, looking, searching,” a voice came from next to her.

Shepard spun around, fumbling for her weapon. She paused when she recognized the…person.

“Cole,” she said. “I think I forgot you?” That didn’t make sense. He’d been with her the last time she was in the Fade. “You haven’t been here the entire time, have you?”

“I’ve been with you,” he reassured her. “Helping. I don’t mind that you don’t remember me.”

Shepard was unexpectedly touched. “Thanks, kid,” she told him.

He didn’t acknowledge her words, instead peering out into the swirling green mists and pointing forward. “She wants you to come to her. You remind her of her, hard and bright, trying to make yourself into a diamond for the cutting edge.”

“Who, Morrigan?”

“Not yet,” Cole answered.

That was not as helpful as Cole seemed to think he was, but Shepard set off in the direction he indicated anyway.

A few minutes’ walk led her to the distraught witch, who was hoarsely crying the name of her son.

Now that she understood the reason the woman had activated the Eluvian and turned her fortress upside down, Shepard was feeling much more sympathetic.

How had the kid gotten into the Fade, though? Shepard had only met him once, just before the journey to the Arbor Wilds, while strolling through the garden with Solas. “You’re so old!” he had squeaked at the two of them, and Shepard had blushed to think that the kid disapproved of her holding hands in public. At her age. Of over 10,000.

“He ever do anything like this before?” Shepard said, looking around for anything to indicate where a young kid might have run to. The area might not be full of bad dreams, but Thedas had never had a golden age, if the statues and architecture populating this place were any clue.

“No!” Morrigan insisted emphatically. Perhaps recognizing that most ten-year-olds did not vanish into the Fade, she admitted, “Kieran is…special. He has a special purpose. But not this one!”

Morrigan was frantic, nearly hysterical, but Shepard managed to get her calmed down and focused on the ground and any landmarks that might have attracted her son. They moved quickly nonetheless- Shepard was certain that they would be able to keep up a better pace than a weedy-looking kid.

This belief was rewarded when they turned a corner and saw two figures bathed in light: Kieran and Melissa Cook.

“Mythal,” Shepard blurted at the same time that Morrigan growled, “Mother.”

They both looked at each other in astonishment.

“Your mother?” Shepard said skeptically.

“’Tis she, yes, but what did you call her?” Morrigan asked, eyes darting back and forth between Shepard and her son. Mythal kept a firm grip on Kieran’s shoulder. He didn’t look scared, just a bit subdued, to Shepard’s quick appraisal.

“By a name,” the woman said, smirking at them. “Not my first, nor my last. Simply one among many.”

“Cut the shit, Melissa, or Mythal, or whatever you want me to call you,” Shepard said. “I assume you’re not just here for a kidnapping. What’s your angle in all this?”

Mythal laughed. She really needed to quit doing that, if Shepard was going to keep her temper.

“Angle? That is so very direct. I am interested in the well-being of my family, as anyone would be.”

“Cut loose the kid, and then we can talk about your general, or whatever he is to you. If you want Solas back, I’m not inclined to fight you for him,” Shepard insisted.

Mythal’s golden eyes glinted. “Careful, Commander. We are far from what we were, are we not? You do not have a ship full of Alliance marines in orbit, and I no longer command an empire, with my loyal family at my side. Do not presume to know my motives.”

Shepard narrowed her eyes. “And I suppose you’d like to change that?”

“I would like to have what I was promised, Commander,” Mythal said, releasing the boy’s shoulder. He did not move, and looked up at her instead, dark eyes assessing.

“You know the first part of the tale just as well as I do. Humanity achieved the stars, only to find them already crowded. We were sent to second-class worlds, preyed upon by slavers, geth, and a system set up to benefit the aliens already in control of the galaxy. Then we were made a new promise- a new galaxy, a new start. Golden worlds for humanity to achieve its full potential.”

“I suppose this isn’t what you expected?” Shepard said, gesturing at the swirling green sky.

Mythal bared her teeth in agreement. “When we reached Andromeda, it was only a new set of catastrophes. The golden worlds were not golden. We were under constant attack by one set of aliens, and the Pathfinders submitted to the rule of a different set.”

“So you came here,” Shepard guessed. “Set up Cerberus’ idea of a human paradise. But it wasn’t such a paradise, was it?”

Mythal grimaced, gestured around herself. “This we brought with us. This we made. I was not in Cerberus. We were not all members. But what Ephraim brought with us was enough. He was involved with your old associate Jack Harper and his research, you see.”

“The Illusive Man,” Shepard said. “None of his plans ever worked out, either.”

“It remains to be seen,” Mythal told her. “Perhaps the Andromeda Initiative failed. But I still have my own plans, after all, and you are alive and well, after all this time. Perhaps he succeeded more than he knew.”

“So what now,” Shepard said softly. “Do we have to fight? Should we break this down, issue by issue? Let’s talk about your grandson first, then move on to the fate of the world.”

Mythal stroked her long, lacquered fingernails through Kieran’s dark hair. He shivered slightly, without changing his expression.

“I was the mother to five children, long ago,” she said. “Three turned against me. One died at the hands of his own grandfather. But one…one was left to me. Just a trace. But I am no more than a trace now, myself.”

She smiled at Morrigan. “And my dear girl brought him back to me.”

“He is not your son. He is mine,” Morrigan insisted.

Shepard turned back to Mythal.

“I’m not really up on my self-created origin stories,” she said. “But you can’t have her kid, even if you think he’s the reincarnation of your long-lost son.”

“Even if it will help end the Blight? Even if I tell you I know how to stop the taint from spreading and ruining this world?”

Shepard hesitated. Then glared at Mythal. “You’ll do that anyway. You won’t let your world die to prove a point. If you want a relationship with your grandson, convince your daughter you’re not out to steal him away.”

“So much good sense! It’s a wonder you get along at all with my Morrigan,” Mythal cackled.

She gestured in the air over the boy’s head, and withdrew a wavering stream of energy. The boy watched with interest, but did not seem harmed. When Mythal relaxed, the boy scampered back to his mother’s side, and Morrigan embraced him in exhausted relief.

“Perhaps you may still be interested in a deal,” Mythal said, watching the two of them with hooded eyes, but addressing Shepard.

“What do you have to offer?” Shepard asked, skeptically.

“Careful,” Cole hissed at her. “Every bait has its barb, every gift a debt owed. She only gives to get.”

“I can tell you how to stop Corypheus. His secrets. His weakness. How to put an end to your campaign. How to take his orb for your own. You covet it, do you not? To fix your ship.”

Shepard narrowed her eyes, looked at Morrigan, who was still staring daggers at Mythal, arms wrapped around her child.

“And what is it that you want from me?” she asked the old woman.

Mythal smiled again.

“Only for you to do what you already long to do."

Her eyes glittered with malice as she pointed one pointed finger at the sky.

"Leave.”

* * *  

The same crowd was still gathered around the Eluvian when Shepard returned, but seeing her stormy face, they were mostly wise enough to leave her be.

Only most of them, Shepard thought, hearing heavy steps follow her up into her tower.

She caught Cullen’s eye as she opened the door to her chamber, but neither invited him in nor shut the door behind her as she walked to her desk.

His face was more worried than angry, so Shepard tried to tamp down her simmering rage at Mythal, or whatever name she was known by these days. She felt helpless, and manipulated, and….out-maneuvered. Every time she’d been in this situation before, she’d at least had allies in her corner, people she could depend on. Anderson. Joker. Kaidan. More the fool she. In the end, she was always alone with her decisions. Paying the price by herself.

“…cannot risk yourself, no matter the perceived urgency of the situation…”

She’d missed some of Cullen’s lecture. Zoned out. She needed to sleep more than an hour at a stretch. She was afraid of dreaming. She didn’t want to touch the Fade. Being awake was no picnic either, though.

At her face, Cullen stopped and took a step closer to her.

“Are you well, Jane?… Inquisitor, I mean. Really.” His face was nothing but concern. “We haven’t spoken since…well. I just wanted to say that I am sorry, and you deserved none of this. You’ve done nothing but the best for all of us, and I…that is what I wanted to say.”

Shepard turned away, wrapped her arms around herself.

“You’re up here to tell me I deserve better, Cullen?” she said. It was almost funny. The only thing she’d been able to think over this past week since the Arbor Wilds was that Solas was no better or worse than she deserved.

“Yes,” Cullen said firmly, approaching her from behind and resting his hand on her shoulder. The idea that he apparently held was so ludicrous to her in that moment that she turned back and looked him square in the face.

“Is that why you came up here, Cullen?” she asked. “To explain my options to me?”

He turned red, tried to stammer out a denial, but that only proved her point.

She knew herself, had known that this clawing rage inside her was going to have to come out somehow. Iron Bull had made her a quiet offer. He was offering as her friend, she thought, and would give her whatever she needed, whether that was a night tied to his bed or a day beating her with a practice sword. He saw sex as kind of public health service. It might even have been good for them both.

But Shepard had seen the fragile, tender look cast his way by the Tevinter mage currently managing her magical forces, and seen Bull carrying Dorian’s adopted daughter on his shoulders down the stairs to the stables. However Bull would see it, they wouldn’t see it the same way. So Shepard thanked Bull, and declined.

Why should she decline now? What was Cullen to her? What was she to any of them?

She remembered Merrill saying “Cullen’s in love with you,” and “Cullen made over a dozen mages Tranquil.” Both thoughts moved her hand, as it came around to the buttons on her shirt.

“Is this what you came up here for?” she asked calmly, unbuttoning her shirt, then folding it neatly on her desk. Her boots were next. She bent to place them next to her desk.

Cullen made a kind of strangled sound in his throat, but he didn’t move away or stop watching.

She unbuttoned her pants next, kicked them off. She was down to her undergarments. Cullen was still fixed in place. His eyes were round and confused, but his expression was avid.

She reached behind her and unsnapped her bra, then shimmied out of her Templar undershorts. They puddled where she stood. The cold air pebbled her naked flesh. She closed the foot of distance between her and Cullen.

“Is this what you came up here for?” she asked him again. He shuddered when she ran her hand into his hair and pulled him down to look at her.

“Maker, I…yes, I’ve thought of…” he stammered. His eyes were wide and innocent. He wasn’t innocent. None of them were.

She stuck her hand down the front of his leather pants and her tongue down his throat. It was sloppy and without finesse, and his teeth caught the side of her lips. He was big and hard under her hand, though.

“Do you want me, Cullen?” she asked, conversationally.

“Yes,” he breathed, trying to catch her mouth again with his own.

“Alright,” Shepard said, backing away from him to the desk, and turning around to brace herself by her two hands against its front. “You can have me.”

There was a pause while he digested that. It was barely an offer, let alone a declaration. She didn’t know what he’d had in mind.

But he was there quick enough, hips pinning her against the furniture, hands coming around to pull her hips back against him.

He let go only to unlace his trousers and pull himself out. He reached around her again to touch her, but she spat into a palm, reached behind herself to slick him down. He groaned.

They both winced when he pushed inside her; he was large, and she wasn’t really ready. She didn’t care, wanted the burn, wanted to punish-

Punish herself, she supposed, since she was surely the only one feeling any pain from this. Cullen tried to slow her down, touch her body. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want him to be sweet to her. And when she pressed back against him hard enough, with a squeeze of her thighs, he gave up on it and just fucked her.

It was a brief enough period of time when the room was filled with their labored breathing and the lewd sound of flesh slapping flesh, but Shepard felt her mind tempted to wander. It was like not thinking about an elephant. She couldn’t even stay out of her own head for this period of time (and it was taking longer than it should, Cullen must think there was some kind of award for drawing this out), and she couldn’t even focus on her own body. Not that her body was offering her much in the moment.

Shepard didn’t think she’d done anything other than hold the side of her desk and grit her teeth, but Cullen abruptly pulled away and she felt him spend against the back of her thighs.

He panted out an apology, saying that he hadn’t known if she wanted him to-

“It’s ok, Cullen,” Shepard said dully. “I got fixed in basic training. No need to worry.”  Solas had never asked.  Maybe he'd already known, somehow.  From Glyph.  Or maybe he wouldn't have minded children.  

Cullen tried to brush her hair back away from her face so he could see her. His handsome face was still red, and now there was a fine sheen of sweat down his neck.

“Did you…? Of course you didn’t,” he said. “Do you want me to…?” he made a vague gesture towards her body. She shook her head.

“No thanks, Commander,” she said softly. She took a step away from him. “You know, I just have to…maybe I’m feeling tired. I think I’ll go lie down.”

She walked to her wardrobe, grabbed a shift out of it, pulled it over herself. When she finally turned around to look at him, he was doing up his trousers, face wrinkled in consternation.

“Ok?” she prodded him.

“Right,” he said softly. “I’ll go back to the Council. Let them know you’re well.”

She nodded. “Thank you, Commander.”

And he left.

* * *

Once she got herself clean again, with a basin of water she magicked up to almost scalding in her rooms, she found that she could sleep. And she was lucky enough not to dream. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, lying on top of all the bedclothes, but it was totally dark in the room when she awoke. Nobody had come and disturbed her. She wondered what Cullen had said to everyone. Then decided she didn’t care.

She pulled on a reasonable facsimile of a sweatshirt and joggers, padded out to the balcony to look down on the Skyhold gardens. They were empty. It was either very late, or very early. So she donned her fennec-lined slippers and walked down the stairs. No one saw her as she crossed through the great hall. The guards at the main doors simply nodded in respect. Once outside, the winter wind cut through her cotton and linen layers. Skyhold’s climate was magic, but it was still winter in the mountains. She should have worn a coat. The wind caught her until she opened the door to the prison. The guards saluted her.

It was warmer inside. It was still humid, given the waterfall in the next room, but warm from the large number of braziers and torches burning within. They were keeping it bright as midday in the room. Solas must hate that, she thought.

“Leave us,” she said, gesturing at the doors.

“Ma’am?” their shift lieutenant said. “How long?”

She cut him an annoyed look. “I’ll call you when I want you back.”

He pressed his fist to his heart, and left.

Shepard approached the sole occupied cell.

Solas had been lying down on the rudimentary pallet against the back wall, but stood up as she approached. She supposed that he had not been asleep. She wondered if he was sleeping any better than her.

She looked around his small cell. It was barely eight feet by ten feet, equipped primarily with the pallet and a bucket.

Someone had brought him a few books and writing materials. Shepard wondered who had thought to be kind to him, but then recognized the top book as an unabridged Chant of Light.

Someone’s idea of a joke, more likely.

Solas had nonetheless been making detailed margin notes. She pitied whoever took the book back, if they were a believer.

Solas approached the bars. Somehow he was still reasonably clean and neat, only tired-looking.

He must have caught her small look of dismay at his surroundings, because his first words were to reassure her that he had been in worse situations.

She made a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sob, and wrapped her hands around two of the bars.

“The very least of our problems, Solas,” she said.

“Vhenan, I am so sorry…” he started, his voice cracking. Shepard shook her head at his words, closing her eyes.

He leaned towards the bars, and she did too. Their foreheads just brushed each other. He brought his hand around the back of her neck and held them there.

“I am glad you came,” he told her. “I did not expect to see you again.”

“Well,” she said, struggling to pull her face into its normal configuration. “I am in charge, so they tell me.”

He nodded. “Did they make you decide, then? I wish I could have spared you that.”

Shepard sighed. “There was no consensus. I was never going to please everyone.”

Solas released her and the bars, and turned away.

“So what is it to be, then? I know they have discussed Tranquility, but I will tell you honestly that I do not believe the ritual will work on me. I fear it might, in fact, render the Veil if attempted.”

“I’m letting you go,” Shepard said, looking at the lock on his door.

That startled him, as her appearance had not. He went very still.

“Why?” he asked after a moment, a worried frown crossing his face.

“Why do you think?” she probed him, engaging her omni-tool.

“I know you,” he said. “You would never forgive your own mistake.”

“My mistake?” she asked, annoyed. Her omni-tool whirred, and the lock clicked open.

“Is that not what you have been thinking?” he pressed. He was most annoying when he was right.

She gritted her teeth and looked away. The door to his cell swung open. He made no move to leave.

“What did you do?” he asked quietly.

“I made a deal with Mythal,” Shepard said.

He went very still.

“What kind of deal?” he asked, his voice suddenly emotionless and cool.

“Does it matter?” Shepard said, finding her fury again. “You’re free. Go. Fight. Raise hell for the elves. Do whatever you please. Somewhere else.”

“What else would I do for my people, other than fight at your side against Corypheus?” he asked after another moment.

Anger and shame was a buzzing feeling in the back of her throat.

“That won’t be a problem for much longer,” Shepard said. “I have a plan to defeat Corypheus.”

Solas’ pale eyes searched her face. “And then?” he prompted her.

She gave up on keeping it from him. “And then I’m going home,” she spat at him. “Mythal was right. There was no mission. There was no reason for me to be here. Just my friends trying to keep me out of the brig. I should go back and find out if there’s anything I can do there. There’s nothing here for me.”

Solas turned away from her, folded his hands behind him.

“I see,” he said. “You would leave all this work undone?”

She wanted to grab him and shake him. He didn’t understand. She ruined everything she touched. He should be glad she was leaving before she could destroy this world further.

“I’m going to kill Corypheus,” she managed to say evenly. “And then, I assume Mythal has her own plans. As do you. As does the War Council.”

He was quiet for a long time, and Shepard thought about screaming at him or trying to provoke him into a fist fight or asking him to talk her out of it.

He did not turn around again. When he spoke, it was towards the wall.

“I will stay until Corypheus is defeated. You will need me in the final fight.”

“Are you sure?” she said, trying to sort out her relief from her dismay. “You don’t exactly have a lot of fans around here.”

“I am well used to that,” he said. “I will take the opportunity to re-acclimate myself to working alone.”

Chapter Text

The mood in Skyhold was not exactly anxious, more like…expectant.  Pregnant.  Anticipatory.

Varric couldn’t find the word he wanted, and it was making his teeth itch.  It was a lot like Hawke’s last year in Kirkwall, for the way that nobody ever talked about what they were doing more than two weeks out. They were all waiting for Corypheus or Shepard to do something else that went ‘boom,’ and they were putting off all consideration of the future until that happened.

The unresolved tension from the largest scale to the smallest- humans against elves, Chantry against reform, Orlais against Ferelden, Shepard against Solas- made everyone irritable.  Except Hawke. She was blissfully indifferent to any conflict not personally threatening her, and her presence was the only comfort Varric found, these days.  He did their worrying for the both of them.  And their financial planning.  And their travel arrangements.   And clothing purchases.  He was possibly getting behind on that last particular, because Hawke seemed to be naked more often than usual, which often presaged her running out of pants.

“What are you writing?” she asked him suspiciously, rolling over in bed to peer over his shoulder. 

“Nothing,” he lied, swatting her rear.  “Go back to sleep.   Just organizing my narrative frame.” 

Possibly he would take out the part about his wife being frequently naked when he reworked his manuscript.  

The Inquisitor wasn’t sharing her plans with anyone, as far as Varric knew.  She swore she’d come out of the Fade with a plan, but she was unwilling to share the whole of it with anyone.  She’d taken three dwarves with her out of Skyhold the day after emerging from the Eluvian- Bianca, Dagna, and Gatsi- only to return at the end of the day, and repeat this process for the next week. It was driving the Seeker mad not to know what Shepard was up to. 

Her questioning of those involved had gone about as well as her interrogation of Varric.  The dwarves involved had explained nothing more than some stonework and site improvements to a flat area about an hour away from Skyhold. Varric managed to corner Bianca afterwards, but she’d only run the tip of her finger down his nose and told him that what she knew and he didn’t would fill every vault in Orzammar.  

That way lay assassins, so Varric was still in the dark.   Solas certainly didn’t know.  He’d been sitting in plain view in the rotunda since Shepard sprang him from the Inquisition lockup, finishing his frescoes and calmly enduring hurled abuse both verbal and substantive. 

Varric was left with nothing to do in the meantime but stay out of everyone’s way and revise “All This Shit Is Weird,” and if that working title was still in effect when he was done with this round of revisions, it was probably sticking. 

He was surprised when the Inquisitor wandered down one morning and collected him.  He was becoming a fine hand with the big, slow gun she called the “Widow,” (when it clearly should have been called a Widowmaker), but he’d long since felt that he had exhausted his utility to the Inquisition, and was hanging on based solely upon accumulated favors and sufferance.  

“Bring your writing desk,” she told him, before casting a look into the rotunda with such accumulated longing that he half-expected ravens to dive from the balconies above warbling songs of despair in response. 

“You, uh, want me to get Chuckles too?” he tentatively offered.  “I can get him out without letting anyone else know.”

She shook her head. “He is free to leave.  He chooses to stay.   But I don’t need him for this.” 

“Right,” Varric said, trying to imagine how a middle-aged writer was more integral to her plan than an infinitely ancient magical trickster god. 

He and the other three dwarves mounted ponies behind Shepard’s placid mare and traveled out to a spot in the middle of nowhere.

Two moderately sized stone pyramids had been erected about a hundred yards apart from each other, and the area between swept clear of debris.   There was still some scaffolding at the top of each, and the other dwarves left him and Shepard to work there once they’d all arrived. Shepard waved Varric over to a large command tent on the periphery of the operational area.

There were braziers set up, a rough plank table, and stools cut from log sections.

“I thought we’d made it past the rustic part of the Inquisition arc,” he groused.  “We have a castle.  Why are we here?”

Shepard plunked herself down across from him and propped her elbows on the table.  She shrugged. “I can’t really tell you.  That would defeat the point.” 

He waited patiently for her to start making sense.  

“I brought you out here because I want you to tell my story,” she said. 

He smirked at her. “Just try and stop me.  I’ve already got a draft.” 

She gave a wry twist of her mouth.  First time he’d seen that in weeks.  “I appreciate that.  But I wanted to go back before that.  Back to Mindoir.  You need to understand the whole thing. You’ve just seen the last chapter of my life.”

He let that linger on her tongue for a bit.

“You think this is the last chapter, Dollface?” he said softly.

The hint of a smile vanished.  “So to speak. I know that the story’s been leaking out in dribs and drabs, but I had a first kind of a chronicler, and I wanted to share her take on it first.”

She pulled out a little black box, set it on the table, and unveiled a ball of glowing light.  He’d seen her project pictures from the little metal circle in her wrist, but the picture was much more lifelike in the scene the ball showed them. 

After the first few minutes, he started taking notes.  Shepard started and stopped the footage at his gesture.  It was a combination of still images, over which a woman’s voice narrated, and moving pictures of Shepard’s last war. 

Whoever the narrator was, she’d had it bad for the Inquisitor. 

It took most of the morning to watch it all.  He was going to need to see it again.  As many times as she’d let him watch. 

“This really happened?” he asked when Shepard put the light away.  

“More or less,” Shepard shrugged.  “I don’t think I looked quite as cool as Liara made me sound.”

“Sounds like you had the same effect on your last crew as this one,” Varric suggested slyly. 

Shepard’s face shut down like he’d called her mother a name. 

“We should be out here for the next few weeks,” she said, ignoring his last comment.  “Will that be enough time for you to write it up?” 

Varric stroked his chin. “Sure.  But can I ask why? You’re going to be the most important person in Thedas, if you pull this off.  Everyone is going to want to know all about you, more than they do right now.  Won’t it all come out then?”

Shepard started stowing her things in her pack for the trip back to Skyhold.

“No,” she said shortly. “I’m leaving the Inquisition once I’m done with Corypheus.  I’ll need to focus on rebuilding my ship.” 

Varric dropped his pen. “What?” he cried, alarmed.  “Does anyone else know about this?” 

“No,” Shepard said with a frown.  “And I don’t plan on announcing it until we’re done with the mission.”

“Dollface,” Varric said, leaning towards her.  “You’ve got a lot of people depending on you.  Everything’s in a delicate state.  Plus, uh, aren’t there some people who are going to miss you?”

Shepard grimaced and wiped her face with a hand. 

“I think I’ve done enough damage in my time here,” she said.  “I’m going to give you all the information you need to fix things, but I don’t really trust that telling anyone what to do will work out better than it has thus far.” 

“You got here when shit was falling apart,” Varric insisted.  “I don’t think anyone thinks they could have put it back together better than you.”

“I do,” she said softly. She shook her head.  “Varric, my own War Council is about ready to impeach me. It’s not altogether a new reaction to my attempts at leadership, but this time I think it’s best I just declare victory and move on.”

“What, just because Curly’s been weeping into the Seeker’s ample bosom the whole week about how you did him dirty?” Varric suggested.  “They’re not going to toss you out over that. They may end up thanking you, in fact.” 

Shepard made a face. “Not them.  Leliana and Josephine.  They think the Chantry is going to name Cassandra the next Divine, and the Inquisition should fall under her purview.  I agree.” 

Varric sighed.  “The Seeker’s great.  Really.  But she’s not exactly experienced in handling a bunch of different people who all want different things.” 

“Only way to qualify for the job is to do the job.  Cassandra’s figured out she’s good for more than stabbing people with a sword.  She’s probably done the last bit of that, in fact. She’ll be great,” Shepard argued.  

Varric shuffled his papers for a moment, looking down at his sketches of Shepard flying across the cliffs at Adamant, staring down the magisters at Redcliffe, and closing the Breach with her hand raised to the sky.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly. “But you already are.”

 * * *

The dragon’s call shook Skyhold just before dawn.  Solas was asleep in the rotunda on the couch- he thought that letting Leliana know where he was at all times was vital to his survival through the final battle- but the creature’s roar rattled the walls, causing bits of paint to flake and fall to the ground. 

Solas had little to do to in order to prepare other than to shrug on his coat and grab his staff, but Shepard’s armored feet were clattering down the main hall outside almost before he’d done so. He barely managed to intercept her before she was out the door.  She was moving quickly, but there was no panic in her face. Nothing but calm resolution. 

“Inquisitor!” he called, grabbing her by the arm.  “What is the plan?” 

She hadn’t shared it with anyone, that he could tell, but Corypheus and the dragon were here, and any value in secrecy had to end now.  

“Can you stop that dragon?” she asked.  “Delay it long enough for me to get Corypheus away to the battle site?” 

He thought hard.  He was still weak, without the orb, but he had no more reason to hold back any of his abilities.  He thought he could. 

“Yes,” he said. “Where will you be?”

“I have to get Corypheus to the battle site for this to work,” she said.  “If you can kill the dragon, meet me there.  Varric knows the way.”  

“Who is going with you?” he asked. 

“Nobody,” she said, firmly. Then she hesitated, shoulders slumping a bit. “Fight well, Solas.” 

Her hand twitched as though she thought about reaching out, but the impulse was forgotten as soon as she heard the other members of the team sprinting in from around the fortress. “Keep them safe,” she said, and she was off, sprinting for the stables.

“Where is she going?” Cassandra shouted, arriving just in time to see Shepard riding Leliana’s horse out the gate at a fast canter.  “Can she even ride that horse?”

“She can do whatever she decides to do,” Solas told the Seeker.  “She is leading Corypheus off.  All we need to do is confront his dragon for long enough for her to do whatever it is she has planned. “ 

“Then let’s get to it!” the Iron Bull roared.  “Come on, dragon!  The Inquisitor isn’t here to complain about ‘endangered species’ now!  I’ll show you endangered!”

Sera, Varric, and even Dorian cheered at that, lifting weapons over their heads, and rushing down to the courtyard.

Solas couldn’t help the small smile that sound engendered in the Seeker’s face and his own.

“Come, then, Dread Wolf,” Cassandra told him.  “We’ll fight together at least this one last time.” 

He was unexpectedly touched by the gesture of support, clasping her hand. 

“One last time,” he promised her.  After today, they might stand on opposite ends of the battlefield, moving the pieces, rather than being moved themselves.  But he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything other than admiration for the woman Shepard had cast as his next adversary. 

Together, they walked into the courtyard, eyes scanning the sky for the dark wings.  

The actual battle was difficult, but not impossible.  There was the increased risk to the Inquisition’s non-combatants that made them all careful of where they drew the dragon’s fire, but the dragon could not understand how the Inquisition’s weapons could reach it even when it thought it had withdrawn out of range.  Sera and Varric tore great holes in its wings with their weapons, and the mages were able to cast barriers over most of the castle to prevent the creature’s enhanced breath from setting much aflame.  The dragon was tiring, Solas could tell, and it would soon be unable to support its weight with its tattered wings.  

They did not see Corypheus, so Shepard must have been successful at drawing him off. 

Solas felt, more than saw, when the Veil ripped open.  It was a few miles away, he thought, seeing the bolts of green light rippling down from the sky.  Shepard.  

The dragon abruptly screamed, disengaged, and began beating its wings to fly in the same direction. It was wounded, but still deadly. It was still capable of sending a blast of energy tainted by red lyrium. 

“Solas!” Hawke yelled, pointing after it.  “It’s going to the Inquisitor.  We have to go after it!”

“You won’t make it in time!” Varric cried.  “It’s almost an hour away.” 

Solas let his staff dip towards the ground.  In the days before the Veil, he might have…but he was too weak. 

Cassandra turned to him, grabbed the front of his tunic.  “Do something!” she snarled.  “You’re thousands of years old!  You must know some way to get there before the dragon.” 

“She’s taking him to the Fade. That’s where he wants to go.  She’s very strong there.  I don’t know if she’s strong enough.  But she’s stronger with you.  She’s her strongest self with you,” Cole said urgently, appearing at his elbow.

“Yes,” Solas gasped. “Perhaps.  You will need to trust me and not panic,” he told the Seeker.

“I don’t trust you,” she told him.  “But I will not panic.” 

“That’s enough then,” he said, grabbing her elbow and hauling her with him as he ran back up the stairs.  The Eluvian. He could only hope that Shepard had not locked it since it was last used. 

Providentially, the Eluvian was not only unlocked but already keyed to the Fade.  He tugged the Seeker through, then turned to face her. 

“This is where you will need to trust me,” he told her.  Cassandra’s face was tight, and she tilted her head noncommittally. 

“Just do it,” she snapped at him.  “And I will judge your intent. 

Very well, he thought. He hoped he could still do this. He had not since the Veil was cast up, but here in the Fade….he hoped.

He pulled magic to him, as much as he could hold.  He hadn’t done so after Adamant, still afraid to show what he was.  But this was where he was strongest.  This was where he had been born. 

Keeping his mind on his oldest shape, he pulled…

And looked down at Cassandra through his six eyes.  He shook his grey fur straight.

Her eyes were wide and surprised, but not terrified.  Nothing terrified this woman after all. 

“I thought…” she swallowed. “I thought it was a metaphor.”

“Everything in the Fade is a metaphor,” he told her.  He was unused to forming words with this mouth, but they came out clearly enough. “Climb on.”  

He sunk to his belly, and with a bit of painful fur-pulling and gouging of his side with her metal boots, Cassandra managed to clamber up on his back.   

“Hold on tight,” he warned her, feeling for the place where Shepard had torn the Veil between the worlds. She took a hard grip behind his ears. Then they were off. 

The Fade surged and changed around them.  He hadn’t done this in so long, had worried he no longer knew how.  But he set his goal as Shepard, and when he ran, the Fade changed with him to bring him closer and closer to her. 

There was a subtle ‘snap’ when he reached the part of the Fade Shepard had claimed as her own. There was nothing there but two stone mounds with some kind of statutes atop them, but Solas could not feel any influence but Shepard’s in the place.  This was her domain.  This part of the Fade held nothing but Shepard’s memories and emotions. 

The rift in the center crackled with green energy. Solas knelt so that Cassandra could slide off his back. 

“Where is she?” Cassandra demanded.

“Not here yet,” Solas growled.   “We got here before her.  This must be her trap for Corypheus.”

“Should we try to go through the rift?” she fretted. 

Solas shook his head. “If we attempt it without her, it would likely tear us apart.”

At that moment, though, Shepard tumbled through, followed immediately by Corypheus.  Corypheus was holding his orb, but Solas’ gaze was drawn instead to Shepard.  She was injured- her armor was broken off all along the left side of her body, the place of her oldest injury.  She’d lost her helmet. 

But she rolled when she hit the ground, and made straight for the top of the stone pillar. 

Corypheus stopped pursuing her, and instead looked up at the swirling green sky. 

He laughed.  “Thank you, Inquisitor!  The Mark has brought me into the Fade, as was its purpose.  This is the place it will begin.  This is the spot on which I will stand to reach into the heavens!” 

Shepard was nearly to the top of the further pyramid.  Taking a risk, Cassandra stood up and yelled to grab her attention.

“Shepard!” she cried. “Do we fight him now?”

Shepard barely halted.  

“No!” they heard her yell. “..other pyramid!” she waved them to the other block at its peak.

Solas did not understand what Shepard was doing, but he leaned over and delicately grabbed the back of Cassandra’s tunic by his front teeth, and bounded over to the pyramid with the Seeker in his mouth. 

Shepard activated whatever the device was on her pyramid.  It crashed into the stone, with echoing vibrations.  Again.  Again. It pounded the earth.  Solas recalled something Glyph had shown him… 

He tossed Cassandra as high up the structure as he could, then scrambled up after her.  His paws could find no purchase on the grooved stone, so he released the Fade energy he held and shrunk back down to his elven form. Both he and Cassandra began to climb. 

Thud.  Thud.  Thud. Corypheus was not even sparing them a glance as he stared up at the Golden City.  Arlathan was empty now, but still held enough power for Corypheus to destroy the Fade, or the entire world, if he achieved it. 

Cassandra reached the top of the tower before he did, and pushed the stone atop the structure until it fell into place.  It began to hammer the earth as well, creating harmonics with Shepard’s hammer that shook the entire Fade.

Solas did remember this part.  Why did Shepard think it would come?  Did she trust her spirits that much?

Corypheus lifted his orb out towards the Golden City.  Solas’ stomach clenched in fear.  There was not much more time. 

“Kalros!” yelled Shepard. “Sacrifice! Duty!  Valor!  Please…”

The vibrations changed, somehow.  The resonance was still there, but jolted into new peaks and valleys.  He felt it.  Heard it.  Then he saw it. 

The giant worm was shining an ethereal white.  Its hundreds of legs twitched in unison, propelling it unerringly towards Corypheus. So rapt was Corypheus in his avaricious contemplation of Solas’ city that he did not see the thresher maw until it was almost upon him. 

The creature was larger than any dragon the Evanuris had ever conjured.  Its jaws were wide and its sickle-like arms were outstretched as it bore down on Corypheus.

Corypheus shrieked Dumat’s name and clutched the orb to his chest, summoning magic through it with such vigor that the fabric of the Fade shimmered around him. 

The thresher maw did not take any notice.  It opened its multiply-hinged mouth, let the acid drip from its teeth…

And swallowed Corypheus whole. 

The distortions of the Fade abruptly ceased.  Cassandra reached out and turned off the hammer.  Shepard must have done the same, because the quiet rushed in.  Solas rolled over onto his back, exhausted.  He had not, regardless of what he’d said to Cassandra, been certain he could manage that magic any longer.  His muscles ached as though he’d run all day, rather than just for a few minutes.  

After a few minutes of panting and gathering his strength back to him, he managed to roll over and look down at where the thresher maw had been.  Instead of the worm, he saw three white and glowing spirits.  The center of the trio was the reptilian creature Solas recognized as Duty.  Shepard slowly approached them.

Solas silently slipped down the side of the pyramid, walking toward the spirits.  

Shepard spoke with Duty while the other two broke away from the group and drew near to Solas instead. 

“This is yours,” Sacrifice told him, holding out his orb. 

“Do you still want it?” Valor asked him, as Solas reached out with trembling hands and accepted it.

“Yes,” said Solas, looking away at Shepard instead.  Duty reached out a hand and cupped her face.  She tilted her head into it and closed her eyes. 

Valor and Sacrifice nodded at him respectfully, and began to depart, their forms shimmering into insubstantiality.  Solas tucked the orb into the crook of his arm and walked slowly to Shepard, not wishing to disturb this moment. 

“…beyond the sea, siha. When it is your time, I will be waiting,” Duty told her, wiping a final tear from Shepard’s cheek. “Farewell.”  The spirit faded as well, leaving Solas and Shepard alone. 

Cassandra watched them from the top of the pyramid, arms folded.  

Shepard turned and looked at Solas for the first time since he’d arrived in the Fade. 

“A giant wolf, huh?” she said, shaking her head.  “I thought you might turn into a dragon, like Mythal.”

“Not a dragon, no,” he said, unnecessarily.

“So you found your orb, then,” she said, her gaze dropping to where it was cradled in his arms.

“Yes,” he acknowledged. “This is why I joined the Inquisition. I planned to use its power to remove the Veil and restore the world I ruled with the Evanuris.”

Shepard made a face. “So I guess this is where we say goodbye.”

Her body was taut and tense. He supposed that she might really be ready to walk away.  Or to fight him for the orb.  He was not certain what she would do.  Or who would win. 

“You believe it has sufficient power to repair your ship?” he asked her, proud of the calmness of his voice. 

She nodded, eyes sad and uncertain. 

He took the two steps to close the distance between them and passed her the orb.

Her hands were tentative when they wrapped around it.  She held it out away from her body as though it were something unpleasant.  He put his hands over her own and spoke the words that would key the orb to her Mark.  The Mark on her hand quieted, its magic merging with the orb’s.  

“I hope your world appreciates what they will have in you,” he whispered. 

Taking a final unearned liberty, he leaned over and brushed his lips against hers, filling his lungs with her breath one last time.

“Dareth shiral,” he told her, and walked away, leaving Cassandra in tears and Shepard gazing down at the orb like she despised it. 

 * * * 

It had been about thirty minutes since the dragon had left and twenty since the rift in the distance had closed.  There was still no sign of the Inquisitor, Solas, or Cassandra, but Leliana decided to give the all-clear, let the scouts assess the safety of their perimeter, and allow the workers the chance to review structural damage.  Leliana walked out onto her balcony.  There were a few holes in the roof and some minor damage to the eastern retaining wall, but by and large, their base appeared secure.

A commotion at the hill beyond the main gate drew her attention.  Riders, nearly a dozen of them.  When she squinted, she could make out blue and grey armor.  Wardens.  She tensed. They could be under Corypheus’ control, even if they didn’t have weapons raised.  She signaled her scouts to rush in and engage them, but just as quickly belayed that order when their ranks parted. Leliana could see that the Wardens’ leader had the gory, mangled head of Corypheus’ dragon tied to a rope and dragging behind her horse.

Leliana smiled and turned away from the balcony to skip down several sets of stairs. 

The Grey Wardens were beginning to dismount in the courtyard before Leliana reached them.  She saw several familiar faces, but none so dear to her as the one of the tiny raven-haired elf who was untying the severed head of the red lyrium dragon. 

“Leliana,” said Lyna Mahariel calmly.  “It’s great to see you.  Would you believe I got another one?”

Chapter Text

Hawke and Varric left first. A week after Corypheus’ defeat, Hawke walked into Shepard’s office without knocking. 

“Come in,” Shepard said, after Hawke was already in the room, poking through the knickknacks on Shepard’s dresser.

“We’re going back to Kirkwall,” Hawke announced.  She pointed at her midsection with both index fingers.  “Varric got me up the duff.”

Shepard froze.  She was never certain what the right response to that particular kind of news was- was she supposed to offer congratulations, condolences, or medical advice? 

“Aveline should have two or three by now.  I need to get this one hidden in her nest in time to convince her that she’s the mother.” 

Shepard’s face was still carefully blank.

“Like cowbirds do,” Hawke explained.  

“Right,” Shepard said, tentatively.  “And does Varric also…agree with that plan?”  

Hawke made a face. “He says we’ll have to keep it if it’s cute.”  

Shepard assured her that any of Varric’s babies would be adorable (what did she know) and asked Hawke to convey her congratulations to the proud father.  He could finish his revisions to his history of the Inquisition from Kirkwall and mail them back for her edits. Hawke winked and shot her with finger-guns before departing Shepard's office.  

And just like that, they were gone, and Skyhold felt much quieter. And less interesting.  

Cassandra and the War Council went next.  Cassandra was to be invested as quickly as possible as Divine, and the three others needed to attend to that and the coronation of Laurent de Ghislain as emperor of Orlais. Vivienne left as well; Shepard heard rumors that she may wed Laurent.  That’s a bit too biblical for Shepard’s taste, given the enchanter’s relationship with the new emperor’s father, but Shepard knew well the strange places grief could take a person.  In any event, Vivienne’s leadership of the ‘not-a-Circle’ College of Enchanters at the University of Orlais was a valuable resource for the distribution of knowledge.  Shepard wished her luck if she thought the University would be able to compete with Davri Machineworks in the marketplace. 

Two weeks later, Dorian requested a meeting, and told her that he was returning to Tevinter. 

“My mother sent a letter. My father is ill, and she says that he wants to meet his granddaughter and son-in-law before he goes.” 

Dorian gave a bit of a choked laugh as he explained that, and wiped at his forehead.  “I’d think it was some kind of a joke, but she used the official House Pavus seal on the envelope, and said that my father ‘appreciates that I have decided to secure the House’s future.’  I believe someone told him that Maia is an era-defining prodigy at necromancy.  Which she is.”  

Shepard gave him a sympathetic smile.  Families were hard.  Not that she’d know. 

“In any event, I suppose Bull and I will need to get married, so as not to make my father into a liar, and then we’ll have to be quick on the road north.  I believe I’ll take the remaining Southern mages from Redcliffe too; I’m entitled to a few dozen retainers once I’m Lord Pavus, and Vivienne still doesn’t want anyone who threw in with Alexius back in the Circle.”

Shepard agreed; she didn’t need a mage army any longer, and it was several dozen fewer mouths to supply.  

“And one last thing, Inquisitor- I don’t suppose you would do the honors? Marry me and Bull?”

That did startle her. She’d come to regret her initial impression of Dorian; flighty and overdramatic he might be, but far more effective as a leader than she might have expected of a civilian.  They hadn’t ever been close, though.  Had she been close to anyone but Solas?  She didn’t think so. 

“Me?” Shepard asked. “Is that even legal?”

Dorian picked some imaginary lint from his gold-shot velvet sarong. 

“You still make the laws here, yes?  And aren’t you a captain?  Captains can marry people, can’t they?” 

“I’m not the captain of anything more than a broken shuttle right now,” she pointed out.

Dorian smiled under his mustaches.  “That sounds rather appropriate for presiding over the nuptials of a Tevinter magister and a Qunari mercenary, does it not?”  

That made her laugh, and she agreed. 

“Oh good,” Dorian said. “You know, as marvelously grateful as Bull is that he has managed to land someone as handsome and talented as me, he does still need a bit of reassurance that he’s doing what he’s supposed to.  I think having his commanding officer tell him that he can sign off, stop being ‘Hissrad’ or whatever barbarous title he had, and start being a husband and father would mean a great deal to him.  Yes? I’ll send you the robes.  Please don’t wear your own clothes.” 

So a week later, in front of a crowd of the remaining members of the Inquisition, Shepard declared Dorian Pavus and the Iron Bull married.  The grooms wore blue silk tunics.  Shepard and Maia wore silver brocade.  Sera wore yellow plaid and released doves, which mostly avoided contact with the wedding party. The Chargers got very, very drunk. 

And with their departure two days later (to give everyone involved time to sober up), Skyhold ceased to feel like an Inquisition fortress, and became a Grey Warden outpost instead.

Lyna Mahariel was a fearsomely proficient leader, and Shepard gladly released nearly all of the remaining administration of Skyhold into her small, capable hands.  The woman was managing threads of politics and commerce across most of three countries, and seemed to already know most of the personnel remaining at the fortress.  She’d arrived at Skyhold with the former Fereldan king, and was greeted as a sister by personages as varied as Morrigan and Dagna.  Shepard couldn’t begin to understand the complicated polygonal sexual relationships that seemed to be underpinning Mahariel’s web of influence (not that she was one to speak), but she was told that Morrigan’s son, of all people, was to be named the next heir to the throne of Ferelden, and in return, there were going to be fewer assassinations of people challenging the Wardens’ new claim to Skyhold. 

Mahariel’s current project was a cure for the Blight taint, and she’d coopted Merrill (again, some kind of former lover or perhaps family member or perhaps both?), Morrigan, and Dagna to the task. As well as most of Shepard’s salvaged equipment.  All of the above were now en route to Amaranthine, with Sera on protection detail.  Shepard wished them all the best with it. 

That left Shepard alone with Scout Harding (now Warden-Recruit Harding), most days, to review reports forwarded from Val Royeaux of remaining rifts, and to ride out to close them.  

“You’re not alone,” a voice told her.  “I’ll protect you until you go.”  But Shepard quickly forgot who had spoken. 

Three months after Corypheus was gone, so were the rifts.  Shepard picked up her orb (wrapped in a discarded linen tunic and shoved in a corner of her closet), filled her backpack with coffee, dried ram jerky, fruit leather, and glowlights, and set out for the Viking.

Cullen still had a few soldiers patrolling the area, and they were happy to see her and share their fire.  They reported no incursions, elven or otherwise, in the time they’d spent in the area. Shepard passed the evening in their camp, then dismissed them.    She’d be living out of the Viking while she made her repairs, and she had nothing to fear from any likely visitor or intruder.

As alone as she’d felt, these past few months, she quickly realized that she knew nothing of real solitude.  It was one thing to bear the burden of command.  It was another to wake and sleep without speaking to another person. 

She told herself she’d spent 10,000 years without company, and she could stand a few more months.

The orb itself was easy enough to integrate into the engine of the spacecraft.  The old core was slag- there was barely a need to encase it in shielding and bury it in the nearby mountains, but she took the time to go through the appropriate disposal process.  Never let it be said that she dispensed with safety regs out of mere convenience.  The orb, when examined back at Skyhold, had proven to be something like pure eezo, and it fit seamlessly into the existing engine.  All Shepard really had to do was fix up the physical damage to the ship's systems.  And she now had nothing but time on her hands to do it.

When she couldn’t stand the silence, she had Glyph play music, or old vids, or lectures.  She listened to Miranda’s playlist of soprano arias, and Liara’s favorite cello solos, and even Vega’s thumping, grinding experimental dance playlists.  It would have been easy enough to delude herself into thinking that they were waiting for her at the other end of her journey.  They weren’t.  

But she was humming along with Dido’s Lament on the evening when the communicator buzzed to life. Shepard was halfway inside the navigation console, covered in grease, flashlight clasped in her teeth, when she heard the faint ‘Hello!’ from the other side of the ship. 

She jerked her way free, leaving no small amount of hair and skin behind, and stumbled on her knees to the communicator. 

She’d muted the thing almost to silent while it played her distress call on a continuous loop.  She’d long since given up any hope of a reply, given Mythal’s description of the fate of the Andromeda Initiative.  But when she frantically brought up the message on the full screen, there was the cheerful, smiling face of a young asari with striking, tiger-like markings on her pale blue skin.  Shepard restarted the message, and increased the volume.

“Hello! I mean, Pan pan Viking Viking Viking. This is Thalia P’Ryder, on the Olaon.  Received, pan pan.  I got your hail.  Wow, your ship is old!  And so are you.  I mean, Commander Shepard!  I read about you in uni.  You are soooo lost.  Anyway, I’m sorry I can’t help you out, but I’m not exactly supposed to be in this system anyway, because your planet is under, like, super-duper level 4 biohazard quarantine, and this is Kett space, and wow, how are you still alive? 

[Muffled banging indicated that Thalia had been momentarily distracted by something else.]  

But!  If you somehow make it off-planet, here are some coordinates for the nearest relay. Look me up!  I’ll totally be your pilot if you’re traveling back to the Milky Way, and buy you some drinks if you tell me how you ended up on Thedas.  Over.” 

Shepard played it again. And then a third time.  She crossed to the navigation table, plugged in the coordinates.  A six-month journey, if she jury-rigged the FTL drive with what she had to hand. Her world was six months away. 

She wiped her hands off on her trousers and walked out of the ship to her banked campfire.  She suspended her canteen over the fire and boiled up a cup of coffee. 

She wondered where Solas was. 

"He misses you," said Cole.  

Chapter Text

The Viking was repaired.  Shepard broke the wax seal on the bottle of Starkhaven whiskey she’d brought along for the occasion and, in lieu of bashing it against the side of the ship, drank it.  True dark came late, this far into summer, but the air was clear and Shepard could see the many twinkling stars of Andromeda overhead, augmented by the occasional rocketing spark from her fire.  She was almost through her supplies.  She’d need to go back somewhere and pick up everything she, personally, would need before she left.  Skyhold, she supposed, calculating distances in her mind.  Then she recalled that she had a spaceship.  She could go anywhere in the world in the time it took to program the destination into the nav console.  Less than two years on the ground and she’d started calculating distances in units of days on a horse.  She hated horses.  She was never getting on another one as long as she lived, she resolved. 

Freed of the constraints of distance, she spurred the Viking into the sky the next morning, letting it run slow and over the treetops to adjust herself to the controls.  She’d never been much of a pilot, and mountains were not a usual obstacle in interstellar travel, so she kept the ship to a sedate pace as she followed the spine of the Frostbacks to the north. 

Thedas was changing. Shepard saw dwarven miners setting charges to widen a path for rail and telephone wires; the first commercial line was already mapped between Orzammar and Jader.  Bianca had plans for a continent-spanning web of trade; demand for metal ore was rising to replace lyrium as Orzammar’s main export, and the dwarven kingdom was securing imports of food and other surface necessities in exchange.  Bianca might get that paragon nod after all, Shepard thought. 

It took her another couple of hours to find Val Royeaux; terrain always looked different from above. Shepard considered buzzing the grand market, but decided against it.  She landed instead on the lawn of the University of Orlais, and emerged to a crowd of startled Templars and students. 

“Good morning,” Shepard told the crowd.  “Just visiting.  Here to see the sights.  Visit the Grand Cathedral.  Please don’t touch the ship.” 

The chancellor soon scurried out to offer her tea and biscuits, but was relieved when Shepard asked for a carriage into the city instead.  Because she had manners, she asked him to send a bird to Leliana to announce her imminent arrival.

“Of course you report to Leliana,” she said when he sputtered. “I won’t tell Vivienne.”

He neither confirmed nor denied his true loyalties, but provided the carriage easily enough.

Shepard mentally composed her shopping list for the trip to the relay.  She planned to make most of it in stasis, but as her current whereabouts would attest, it was worth planning for contingencies.  Gold and lyrium were likely to be her best source of trade, if she had to pay her way through the relay, but she was uncertain how far her former companions’ generosity would extend now that she was no longer in charge and their goals had diverged.

The carriage delivered her to a back entrance to the Grand Cathedral; it seemed her visit was not to be an official one.  A young woman in religious gear was waiting for her arrival, and promptly led her into the deep warren of Chantry offices closed to the public and separate from the holy spaces flanking the main square.  Shepard was deposited in a large sitting room furnished with ornate silk sofas and a large mahogany desk.  She suddenly recognized the piece from Josephine’s office at Skyhold.

The woman in question soon entered from the next room, arm in arm with Leliana.  They were talking animatedly about a cleric whose name Shepard did not recognize, but they stopped immediately when they saw Shepard seated on the visitor’s settee.  They both looked well; healthy, well-dressed, and subtly more at home than they’d ever been in Skyhold.  Although they were clearly discomfited to find Shepard in Val Royeaux, uninvited and reeking of months of machine oil and woodsmoke, they were nothing but polite and welcoming.  

Shepard had been uncertain of her welcome; she became more at ease as Josephine quickly organized a tea tray and Leliana caught Shepard up to date on minor developments in Orlesian politics over the past few months.

Eventually, Leliana murmured that of course they were so pleased to see Shepard because they had not been certain they would meet again before Shepard’s departure.  There was a question hidden in that polite statement; Leliana had not planned for Shepard’s influence in whatever course they were planning. 

“I just stopped by to pick up a few things before I left,” Shepard told them reassuringly. 

Both relaxed fractionally.  

“But of course,” said Josephine.  “The Chantry owes its very existence to the Herald.  Please let me do whatever I can to assist you.  Do you have a list?” 

“I do,” Shepard acknowledged.  “And I wanted to say hello to Cassandra as well before I went.”

“As if we could stop her, once she finds out you are here,” Leliana said ruefully.  “She is with a delegation from Nevarrra.  We are merely awaiting the sound of breaking glass to signal the end of the meeting.”

There was no such destruction, but after a few more minutes of only somewhat stilted conversation, a separate door opened roughly and Cassandra entered.  She tossed her tall headpiece angrily to the side (Josephine diving to catch it before it was intercepted by a priceless bit of statuary).

“This is your fault,” she told Shepard.  “You told them I was good at leadership.   They believe that means attending hours of meetings with sniveling bureaucrats every day of my life!” 

“Occupational hazard,” Shepard told her sympathetically.  They eyed each other for a moment.  Shepard felt a bit grubby and unprepared (perhaps she should have stopped by Skyhold first for a bath), and Cassandra was obviously uncomfortable in her elaborate, embroidered robes. 

That didn’t stop Cassandra from throwing her arms around Shepard in a rib-creaking bear hug. 

“It is good to see you, my friend,” she whispered fiercely.

Shepard felt her throat close for a moment as she returned the embrace as tightly as she could without mussing Cassandra’s robes. 

Despite Cassandra’s grousing, it seemed as though Cassandra really was handling this turbulent time in Thedas’ history as well as could be expected.  She kept a firm grip on Emperor Laurent, a light hand on Bianca and the University, and a stout resistance to the growing Qunari threat. 

After a half hour of this kind of talk, Shepard asked, “And Solas?  Any word of Fen’Harel?" 

The three women exchanged glances over their teacups. 

“We did wonder if you had heard from him,” Leliana said carefully.

Shepard shook her head in negation. 

Josephine was trying to convey something to Cassandra with her eyes, but Cassandra only made a noise of resignation and confessed that finding Solas was one of the goals of the Chantry, though an unfulfilled one.

“We suspect him of everything, and can catch him at nothing,” Cassandra said.  “There are slave revolts brewing in most Tevinter cities, laborers and artisans going missing from Orlesian estates and Fereldan alienages, and a number of nobles from the Dales have been found bound and dumped outside of Val Royeaux.  Alive, but still.” 

“Yes, shame on him, freeing slaves and retaking the elven homeland,” Shepard said drily.

Cassandra sighed.  “I was afraid you would say that.  You know that I am not unsympathetic to the elven cause, but reorganizing the role of mages and Templars in the Chantry is controversial enough, and I cannot forget that Celene was nearly deposed for mere rumors of affinity to Dalish nationalism.”

Shepard bit her tongue before she could tell Cassandra that the elven cause would not keep for a more convenient day.  She would simply have to trust Cassandra to make the right decisions when they were forced upon her.

Eventually they could no longer ignore the various secretaries and clerks that continually peeked in upon them.  Every moment of Cassandra’s day must be spoken for, Shepard thought. 

Shepard stood and said that she would need to excuse herself and see to her ship.  Leliana passed her a note with arrangements for a supply pickup, and sincerely wished her the best.  Shepard clasped her hands with Cassandra.  This would likely be her hardest farewell.

A glimmer of jewelry caught Shapard’s eye- she’d never known the former Seeker to wear any.  Cassandra self-consciously touched one of a pair of fine gold drops in her ears.

“Ah,” she said, blushing. “A gift from Cullen.”

Shepard smiled in slow understanding.  “I’m glad,” she murmured.  “You deserve all the best.”

 * * * 

The next few weeks were frustrating.  She could confirm Cassandra’s intuition of the cause of the incursions in the Dales, but while every likely-looking elf she could corner treated her with the utmost respect and courtesy, nobody admitted to working for Fen’Harel, or Solas, or an elven revolution. 

And after a couple of weeks of that, when she was certain word must have gotten back to Solas that she was looking for him, she got angry.  He didn’t know what she wanted.  Even if she was just after a more fulsome explanation of his background or the opportunity to knee him in the balls, he owed it to her. 

So she was not in a great mood when she returned to Skyhold, parked the Viking on the former parade grounds, and stomped her way up to Morrigan’s Eluvian, unused since the witch’s departure for Amaranthine. 

She was cursing Solas’ race and gender when she opened it to the Crossroads. 

She was coming up with more colorful turns of phrase by the time she found the labyrinth of mirrors. She plopped herself down in front of a likely one (framed by wolves), and settled her things to wait. 

She had the back catalogue of hundreds of years of civilization to entertain her; she could keep this up as long as necessary.

Midway through Blasto III, she saw a figure emerge from a mirror several rows down from where Shepard sat cross-legged on her pack. Shepard waved.  The startled elf scurried back through the mirror she’d entered from.  During Last of the Legion, Shepard spotted the gold armor of a Sentinel as he darted between two Eluvians, eyes wide with concern.  Shepard shouted hello, but received no response.  

She decided to take a nap between her first viewing of Fleet and Flotilla and the second.  It really was terrible, but she felt Tali’s presence whenever she heard that overwrought background orchestra. 

Shepard was roughly shaken awake by a middle-aged Dalish woman.  That was progress.

“You come with me, shem,” the woman snapped.  Charming, Shepard thought.  Nobody had called her that to her face before, and she was certain Solas would not approve.  Your Dear Leader can’t un-fuck this human, she wished she could tell her guide. 

The elf was wearing an assortment of leather odds and ends under a tactical vest with armored plates sewn into it.  Nice to see that Solas was keeping his people well-supplied. 

Shepard allowed herself to be led through one in a row of non-descript Eluvians, one she’d seen no person enter or exit. 

The other side of the Eluvian was a mostly-intact elven fortress.  The walls all showed signs of recent repair, and Shepard could hear the background murmur of voices in many different languages.  

Shepard’s guide steered her through the castle to a large chamber that whispered “throne room.” There were murals of elves and wolves in a style Shepard immediately recognized.  Nearly a dozen elves in similar armor milled around the place, trying to look dangerous.  Shepard smiled.   

“I need to take your weapons,” one said, half apologetically.  She recognized him as a member of Solas’ artillery team. 

She thought about pointing out Solas’ survival despite considerably worse instigations during the Inquisition, but decided not to bother rubbing it in to his new guards.  She stripped off her shotgun and handed it over, and the guard competently emptied the chamber and engaged the safety.  Solas has been busy, Shepard thought.  The shithead. 

“Outside,” the guard said. “I’ll give this back when you’re done.”  

Shepard took a deep breath and walked out onto the large, columned veranda.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust.  It was midday here, somewhere in a mountain range, and the sun was bright. 

It caught off the ridiculous armor Solas was wearing.  The greaves were golden, like the armor Mythal's Sentinels wore, with overly fussy details of wolves and elven faces.  The top had some non-functional pauldrons and vambraces in a contrasting metal.  The whole outfit was topped off with a wolf’s pelt. 

He’d shaved his head again, and she focused on his face as he approached. 

His hands were locked firmly behind his back, as though he feared to touch her. He dragged his eyes off of the floor, then let his gaze bounce away.

“You should be gone by now, vhenan,” he began to chastise her. 

“Shhh,” she said, stepping closer to him.

He flinched like a wild animal when she touched him to untuck the wolf’s pelt from his belt. She pulled it off, gave the soft fur a covert caress, then tossed it behind her. 

“What are you-“ he started to say, but she shushed him again.

She gently took his wrists to tug off the gauntlets, then dropped them by the pelt. 

She pushed his long leather overcoat to the floor. 

He stared at her in mute incomprehension.  

“There you are,” she said, satisfied, when the worst trappings of his new job were discarded. 

His eyes were sad and distant as he regarded her, waiting.  

“It’s fixed,” she said simply.  

He nodded.  He already knew that.  He’d known that for weeks, no doubt.

She hesitated a moment, searching his face.  

“Come with me,” she told him, at the last.

A wave of pain passed over his features.  He closed his eyes and turned away from her.

After a moment, he spoke, voice pitched low and urgent. 

“If I were only Solas, you know that I would, my love.”

“You can,” Shepard insisted. She saw the knuckles on his hands go white as he clenched them together.  

“I have my duty,” he said. “I cannot abandon my people for the six hundred years you will travel back to your world.  They have suffered long enough.  I am all they have left.” 

That was a bit of a low blow, but Shepard pressed him.

“Six months,” she insisted. “Give me six months.”

He turned back, his expression that of a man accustomed to fighting against hope. 

“There’s a relay in Andromeda,” Shepard told him.  “I don’t know if it’s the Andromeda Initiative or something else, but my people are out there.  Six months away.  We’ll go, tell them there’s a human colony that’s struggling-“ she took a deep breath. “And then we’ll come back. Whatever the answer is.  But I’m persuasive.  We’ll find a few people who can help, at the least.”  

Solas put his hands on her forearms, let them clench and relax.

“Why?” he asked, his voice choked. 

Shepard gave him half a smile.  “I had it wrong the entire time.  There wasn’t a mission.  My mission was already over.  I was supposed to be retired.  I just couldn’t let it be done.   I didn’t know how to live if I wasn’t trying to save the world on my own, even though my friends sacrificed quite a bit to give me this chance.”

He opened his mouth to object, but she pressed on.  “You know, I told you a long time ago that I’d never had a partner.  And that was true.  I just never thought about it from your perspective- and part of that was you being a fucking squirrel and not just telling me what you were trying to do, let’s not forget that- but it sounds like you could really use one too.”

His face was softer, blue-violet eyes crinkling a bit at the corners.  He was such a sentimentalist, he was going to cry.

“You’re not going to get a better offer,” Shepard warned him, or she tried to, but he cut her off with his lips on hers, and she hoped his guards got a really good look at it, because there was going to be plenty of it in Shepard’s idea of their brave new Elvhenan.  

* * * 

The Viking lifted off from an uncharted mountain range in the Hundred Pillars a week later, well-supplied with food, lyrium, and artifacts both magical and precious. 

Javik's stasis pod was built to hold a Prothean warrior in full battle armor.  It had undergone a few adaptions.  There was room for two humans.  Barely.  But only if they held each other very, very close. 

FIN

Chapter Text

Shepard closed her eyes on Thedas, and opened them, a mere second later, in zero-g. It hadn’t been a second.  She wouldn’t know how long until she shook off the stasis-sickness.  She was glad she hadn’t eaten for the prescribed ten hours before launch, and she was really hoping Solas didn’t get space-sick either.  She knew how long cleaning vomit up in zero-g could take. 

She’d hoped that she might wake up already at their destination, but there were limits to the kind of piloting a VI could do, and it stood to reason that the local authorities did not want to let an unknown craft using technology that must be 10,000 years out of date dock in their port without asking a few probing questions of the passengers.  

So Shepard reached for the lip of the stasis pod and tried to pull her protesting body up and out of the passenger compartment.  Her elbow accidentally knocked her traveling companion on his handsome chin.  His eyes flinched open wildly. 

“Did you actually go to sleep?” she wheezed at him, coaxing her lungs into accepting the stale mixture of gasses in the cabin.  Nitrogen and oxygen and amine scrubbers- the reassuring stink of breathable spaceship air. 

He gave her a glance of mild reproof.  “I received remarkably few instructions on how to prepare for a six month journey through the stars.  So I treated it as though I were entering uthenera.”

“Right, a short nap then,” Shepard said, thinking of the two-thousand-odd years he’d dreamed after destroying the elven empire.  

Shepard adroitly flipped herself out of the pod and maneuvered over to the pilot’s chair. 

Solas watched her, attempted the same, and slammed himself into a bulkhead.  Shepard suppressed a snicker.  The two of them were agreed on rebuilding their relationship from a new foundation of trust and honestly.  But Shepard was not above watching him flail around a bit until her (animal, unworthy) need for retribution was fully satisfied. 

But she did love the lying shitweasel, in the end, so she only watched him scramble for a handhold for a moment, abdomen flexing in panic, before she relented and gave him a few tips on navigating in zero-g.

“Look at the steering console.  Watch it. It doesn’t move.  It’s down.  Orient so that the steering console is down.  Walk down with your arms as if the wall were a ladder.  I’ll buckle you in.” 

He got close enough that Shepard could hook his ankle and pull him into the co-pilot’s seat with a minimum of further damage. 

Her crew safe and accounted for, Shepard turned to surveying her ship’s status.  All her boards were green, and even if the nav console hadn’t already told her they made it, she could see their destination out the window. 

“We’re in the gravity well of an ice moon orbiting a gas giant,” she narrated for the benefit of her civilian co-pilot.  “He-3 mine depot, I assume.”  She could see the lights of a reasonably-sized settlement near the equatorial ring, where unblemished white gave way to mottled brown and blue- liquid water, presumably.  She flicked a switch, and the overhead screen turned on to reflect their true target, floating some distance above them but still visible to the naked eye- a mass relay.

“Similar in function to an Eluvian, correct?”  Solas said, looking at it. 

“Almost exactly the same,” she acknowledged.  “Just much bigger.”

Her comms unit blinked to inform her she had hails awaiting them.  Fingers flying over the display, she brought the port authorities up to her main. 

Shepard smiled as a buzzing turian voice calmly requested information.  Her UT couldn’t decipher it.  The language had drifted over the years.  But the video, once it caught up to the voice transmission, reflected the familiar mandibles and frills of what could have been any navigator in the Milky Way galaxy.  Those ugly cat-bird features were beautiful to her eyes in that moment. 

Shepard broadcast her own video in response.

“Securite securite securite,” she said to the microphone.  “This is the Viking, requesting permission to dock.  Can you understand me? Over.”

There was a brief pause as the turian frowned down at his display.

“Hail Viking.  Humans, huh? You from the Milky Way?  Over,” he said in passable English. 

Shepard had only a second to digest that question, and the implications thereof.  Lacking background on the political situation she was entering, she went with honesty, or a portion of it.

“Yes, this is Evelyn Trevelyan.  I’ve been adrift for some time.  Do you have docking facilities that will accommodate my ship?  Transmitting specs.  Over.” 

“Yeah, sure,” the turian said casually.  “Transmitting docking instructions.  Meet with security when you arrive.” 

Shepard closed out the comms and looked at her co-pilot.  He had her little VI on his lap, with an article on turians on display. 

“That was a turian, correct?” he asked.  “A martial race?” 

Shepard shrugged. “They were ten thousand years ago. A lot can change in that time. This one didn’t exactly scream military precision, even allowing for translation issues.  But I’m glad to see a familiar face, so to speak.” 

The docking instructions led them to the terminus of a large space elevator tethered to the equator, some thousands of kilometers above the surface of the ice moon.  Shepard had no trouble approaching the berth the coordinates represented.  The parking corridor unfurled an umbilicus that attached easily to the hatch. Shepard heard the squeal of gasses representing the attachment of the umbilicus to the hatch. 

They waited there a few moments until a knock at the hatch indicated the arrival of security or customs inspectors. 

Solas’ eyes were bright with excitement when she checked his readiness to welcome his first Andromedans to their tiny vessel.  Shepard unlocked the hatch and admitted two turians to the Viking.

The turians were dressed in a uniform that read civilian, rather than military, to Shepard’s critical gaze.  They had heavy mag-boots securing their feet to the floor of the vessel, but only small sidearms buckled to their belts.  Physiologically, they could have been Garrus’ cousins, though their clan-markings were unfamiliar to her. 

The pair were male and female, with the female apparently in charge, if the extra stripes on her aubergine jacket were any clue.  The omni-tool she engaged to scan the interior of Shepard’s ship was not unusual to Shepard’s appraisal. 

“Scavenger?” she asked Shepard in a voice that bore the merest hint of curiosity.  “This is quite the museum piece you have here.”

“Salvage,” Shepard replied, letting a hint of defensiveness creep into her voice.

“Yeah,” the male turian said, spreading his mandibles in amusement.  “This thing’s banged all to hell on the exterior.  Real prize.”

The female silenced him with a sterner glance. 

“Port fees are 370 credits a day, due daily.  You want gasses, water, fuel, or gravity, that’s extra.  Rates are published.  You looking to offload your salvage here, you pay customs on the way in.  First day is due now,” the female officer informed Shepard.

“Can I pay it in kind?” Shepard said, frowning.  “I have salvage to trade.” 

The officer was unsurprised. “What do you have?  I can take heavy metals or eezo here and give you credit, or we can lien your ship and you can take your chances at the market.” 

“What’s the rate on eezo?” Shepard asked.  She had never been in the position of bargaining for port fees personally, but this process had been well-established in her own time.

“One hundred seventy-five basis points under Kadara daily market,” the turian said.  “I can take it right here and give you credit.” 

“That’s robbery,” Shepard said.  She truly had no clue, but she’d never met a port authority agent who hadn’t tried to fleece salvagers.

The turian’s mandibles wiggled in her race’s version of a shrug.  “You pay for convenience,” she said. 

Shepard floated slowly to the small cargo compartment of her vessel and unlatched the door in the bulkhead. She pulled a steel box full of lyrium ore from a pile of crates.   

“Here,” she offered it to the male turian, who had his own small container and calipers at the ready. 

Shepard’s eyes narrowed at the turian’s reaction to the opening of the coffer.  He hid it well, but Shepard knew what surprise looked like on a turian.  He scanned the pile of blue pebbles and dust several times, then very gently scraped a lump into a test-tube sized container.

“That’s 20,000 credits after deducting for the day’s port fee,” he announced.  Shepard kept her face impassive.  With some quick mental math, she determined that the price of eezo on this station was wildly disproportionate to the market Shepard had known in the Milky Way.

“We’ll transfer the credits to a new account for you, Evelyn Trevelyan,” the officer said.  “But we need to ask you to leave the rest of your eezo salvage on the ship here unless it is needed to complete a larger transaction. Regs prohibit the import of any commodity that would have a material effect on the local market without the use of a licensed broker.  And that much, uh, ore, would be very material.” 

Shepard nodded, wondering what these people did for fuel if a few ounces of eezo ore would flood the market.  If that was the case, the eezo core in the tail of the ship would probably purchase the entire station. 

After verifying that her omni-tool was capable of connecting to the station’s network and accessing her new credit account, Shepard and Solas followed the port authority officers through the umbilicus to a corridor with artificial gravity.

Solas grunted when the mass effect fields caught them, and Shepard knew why.  Thedas’ gravity was ten percent below the level Shepard had been accustomed to in orbital installations.  Shepard had been living in a low-gravity environment for a couple of years.  Solas had lived in it his entire life.  He had to be feeling the sudden weight of his body like a pair of lead boots.  She wasn’t certain if he’d even be able to walk in an Earth-typical gravity environment, at least not without a lot of physiotherapy. 

She caught his elbow to be sure he could stand, but he shrugged her off, taking deep breaths of the higher-oxygen gas the station provided. 

“You okay?” she whispered in Common. 

Shepard stood about five-foot-eleven in her stocking feet.  That put her among the tallest human women of her time and even taller than the average human man.  Solas, however, stood at about six-foot-three.  In Thedas, he’d been of average height among men, though tall for an elf.  Shepard had been no more than middling among human women in Thedas, a fact which had continually annoyed her. 

Here on the orbital station, though, Solas had to be feeling the pull of higher gravity on every single inch of his broad-shouldered frame.  He was even taller than the two turians. 

After a moment of adjustment, though, he shrugged off the weight of the artificial gravity and moved after Shepard and the two turians without obvious discomfort. 

The two turians left them at some kind of customs desk, where a line of aliens queued to speak to a professionally-attired asari behind a large desk.

Shepard and Solas drifted to the end of the line, Shepard glad of the opportunity to take in the species waiting to enter. 

She and Solas were the only humans present.  She saw a turian, two asari, and two more quarians.  The quarians, she was mildly shocked to observe, were not wearing exosuits, but wore elaborately draped and wrapped robes concealing their entire bodies and faces behind a mesh grille in their hoods.  There were half a dozen aliens of a completely new species to Shepard-some kind of blue/purple, mammalian bipeds with expressive cat-like faces and facial crests gently evocative of cuttlefish.  A lone krogan brought up the rear of the line, shifting and cursing in annoyance at the wait. 

That was it.  No salarians.  No elcor, volus, drell, or hanar.  None of the non-Citadel races.  She wondered if they’d made it to Andromeda. 

The line moved efficiently over the next quarter hour.  When Shepard and Solas reached the front, the asari scanned them and made a moue of distate.

“You’ll need to go through bio-processing before entering the station,” she said primly.  “You’ve got bacteria I’ve never even seen before all over you.”

Shepard gave the asari her most charming smile.  The asari faltered a bit in her scorn. 

“Names?”  she sighed.

“Evelyn Trevelyan,” Shepard answered.  The asari frowned again, records evidently coming up empty.  

“And you?” the asari nodded at Solas.

“Solas,” he replied, startling Shepard.  She supposed the question was obvious, in context. 

“Surname?” the asari asked.

Solas shot his eyes at Shepard.  She didn’t know if he had one.  She thought “Dread Wolf” was more of an honorific than a family name. 

“Trevelyan,” Shepard answered on his behalf. 

Satisfied, the asari rattled off her rote of questions on their business and travel plans.  Shepard explained that they were in the salvage business, and expected to stay no longer than two weeks in search of trading connections. 

Eventually the asari transmitted a file containing a credentials key to Shepard’s omni-tool and handed Solas a physical token to represent his regular entry. 

“Welcome to Set Milava,” the asari welcomed them.  “I hope you enjoy your stay.”

 * *  * 

Shepard and Solas passed through decontamination and customs without issue.  Along with the crowd of aliens from the inspection line, they were herded into a shuttle and zipped down the space elevator to the ground of the ice moon.  Solas kept a placid, unconcerned expression on his face throughout the entire experience, though his mind had to be reeling from the deluge of unfamiliar experiences. Shepard supposed that the sensory overload the Fade regularly entailed would prepare one for ready adaptation to new situations. 

“Did you just give me your name?” was the only thing he whispered during processing. 

“Sorry there’s no ring,” she whispered back, and he shot her a mildly reproachful glance.

The terminal of the space elevator was a busy port town built under the surface of the moon.  Its metal and synthetic walls were not dissimilar from the ones that had formed the corridors of Omega.  Shepard did not get the immediate impression of decay and dissolution that had marked the asteroid, though, even though most of the fellow travelers were heavily armed.  It was the absence of vorcha, Shepard thought. 

Once the arriving crowd began to disperse to groundside transportation, Shepard pulled Solas aside to a bench and gestured at him to sit and rest while she linked her omni-tool to the local network. 

She rolled her shoulders in satisfaction once new data began to download.  She longed to figure out the history of the intervening 10,000 years, but checked herself at obtaining a local language or two and directions to a food court.  They had time.

“I’m starving,” Shepard said.  “Shall we find ourselves some lunch before we figure out next steps?”

Solas quirked an eyebrow. “I am hungry as well, but is it a good idea to eat the food here?  I have not seen another human since our arrival.” 

“We should be able to eat just about anything an asari could,” Shepard told him.  “And there are plenty of those here.” 

“’Just about’?” Solas clarified.

Shepard shrugged her shoulders.  “The asari were rather catholic in the terms of the creatures they considered suitable for consumption.  It wouldn’t necessarily offend your digestive tract, just your sensibilities.”

“Ah,” Solas nodded. “A long life does have the tendency to broaden the mind’s boundaries.  And the diet as well.” 

Thus resolved, they located an asari-owned eatery and ordered bowls of whatever the two matrons seated in the booth next to them were eating.  It turned out to be a noodle soup with chunks of fish and slices of vaguely familiar vegetables floating within.  Shepard was almost certain she’d eaten something like it before. 

As they slurped the noodles, Shepard eyed her download feed as her omni-tool absorbed languages, encyclopedia entries, and message traffic.

Solas cleared his throat. 

“Vhenan,” he began, and Shepard startled slightly at the endearment.  Solas usually was not one for such language except in extremis.  

He inclined his head at her forearm.  

“Are you certain you wish to absorb much information while we are in public?”

Shepard wrinkled her brow in confusion.  

“What do you mean?” she asked. 

“I mean that it has been a long time, and while you still seem very able to mix with the people here, what you learn of your people may…disappoint you,” he said slowly. 

Shepard’s gaze dropped to her forearm.  

“Oh,” she said, thinking through that.  It wasn’t a foreign line of inquiry to her mind.  The only humans she positively knew still existed were the medieval-era denizens of Thedas. All Glyph could tell her was that some number of humans had survived the Reaper War in the Milkly Way in sufficient shape to dispatch Shepard to Andromeda.  Anything at all could have happened in the long interim. 

“I have some experience in this particular,” Solas said simply. 

Shepard blinked at him, feeling a sudden rush of combined sympathy for Solas and gladness that she had something of a fellow-traveler in this unfamiliar galaxy.  

“Right,” Shepard said, clearing her throat.  “You make a good point.  I’ll wait until we’re alone.”  Spooning soup into her mouth with her left hand, she turned her omni-tool instead to researching the personal tech prevalent on the station. 

“So, my omni-tool still works, luckily enough, but it seems that most people here use a bit more in the way of implants than was the custom in my time,” Shepard said, browsing advertisements for biotech.  “I’d scarcely notice a few more gizmos, but are you okay getting a UT implant at a minimum? You’ll stand out if you can’t speak the language.” 

Solas did not quite say ‘no,’ but he made his strong misgivings known the entire way from the soup stall to a cheerful store-front whose displays featured attractive asari models laughing with (equally attractive) turian models, giving presentations to (presumably attractive) cat-squid students, and fighting off (unattractive) saber-toothed carnivores. 

“Shepard, I do not see how you can be certain that this technology will even work with elven physiology,” he protested.

Shepard rolled her eyes. “Solas, I’ve been through all the tinkering on your genetic code with a fine-tooth comb.  It’s mostly cosmetic, the neurological changes were 99% copy-and-paste from the asari, and the remainder were recessive human traits grafted across the rest of the population.  An artist with the genome, Ephraim was not.” 

Solas still looked doubtful. “I am rather attached to my faculties of reason.  I would hope for more of a guaranty before some device was engrafted against them than your personal reassurances.” 

Shepard sighed.  “If this tech is safe for humans, I’m positive it is safe for elves.  You need to stop thinking of yourself as an elf here.  Nobody else will.”

That drew an even darker look from her partner, so she changed tactics.

“Solas, can you even connect to the Fade here?” she asked him. 

His brows knit together.  

“I have not yet fallen asleep off of Thedas,” he evaded. 

“You know what I mean,” Shepard pressed him.  “Go on, try to cast a barrier or something.” 

He gritted his teeth and made a subtle gesture with a flick of his wrist. 

Nothing happened. 

He stilled, and looked dourly at Shepard. 

“Nothing,” he said. 

“What about biotics?” Shepard asked him.

He shook his head in confusion.  “I do not practice your particular form of magic,” he reminded her. 

Shepard reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit and retrieved his entry chit.  She placed it flat on her palm.

“Move it,” she ordered him.

“I cannot-“

“Just try.  Imagine it floating,” she urged.

His face grew intent, and Shepard felt the smallest wobble in the mass effect fields around them as he concentrated on her hand.  The chit shuddered briefly, but did not lift off her hand.

“See?” Shepard said smugly. 

“Yes, my powers are formidable indeed in this place,” Solas muttered.  “I do not take your point still.”

Shepard clapped him on the shoulder.  “You need an amp, Solas,” she said.  “Otherwise you'll be as helpless as a kitten if we get into any trouble.  It’s a lot easier to master than a big bladed stick, don’t worry.”

Ignoring his weak protests, Shepard steered him into the biotech kiosk.  She had never enjoyed shoe shopping as much as other women, but she loved buying upgrades.

 * * *

Several hours later, their credit account was much diminished, but both Shepard and Solas were in possession of late-market UTs, omni-tool implants, and bio-amps.  Solas was worrying the lump on the back of his skull with his palm, even though removing Shepard’s Milky Way tech and replacing with Andromedan-style implants was, according to the technician, far more of an involved process than neuro-grafting Solas’ virgin system. 

“Don’t be such a baby,” Shepard told him, batting his wrist away from his amp port.  “You’re going to get an infection if you keep touching it.”  

Solas’ eyes were wide and a bit shocky when he glared at her.  “I am adjusting to having an ‘out port’ in my skull, Shepard.  Humor me with a minute or two.”

Shepard was not known for her light touch in such matters. 

“You didn’t even see the other stuff they had in that catalogue,” she told him.  “You have lovely eyes, but you could have had them replaced with something that could see in ultraviolet…or with 3x telescoping focus.”  

“That girl in the store takes eyes out?” he said, disbelieving.

“That girl is probably 300 years old, and you have to make a special appointment to have entire parts swapped out,” Shepard teased him.  He groaned. 

“And I didn’t see any mods for humans, but if you were a krogan in search of a little extra…something,” she said, with a significant look at the waist of his jumpsuit, “they were advertising a fully-functional, fully-compatible, steel-reinforced….” 

“I get the idea,” Solas cut her off.  “Truly, your people have engendered wonders.” 

Shepard smirked at him, lightly running her fingers over the back of his head. 

“Are you going to grow your hair out again?” she asked.  “It will cover up the amp port, back on Thedas.” 

He nodded.  “If you liked it,” he said, visibly retaking control of himself.  

“I like it any which way,” Shepard said, taking his arm.  “Let’s go find a weapons store next.”

It was as close to being on a date as Shepard had experienced in…oh….ever.   Solas was upright and attentive as they walked a short distance to a less-descript warehouse front manned by a quarian in full armor. Shepard had to provide proof of credit before admission to the warehouse, but once inside, she sucked air around her teeth at the array of weapons, armor, and demolitions on display.

At her low whistle of approval, Solas quirked the corners of his mouth.  

“I cannot recall seeing that particular expression on your face before whilst fully-clothed and in company,” he said in a low voice. 

“Sex is great and all,” Shepard reminded him, “but have you ever gone into battle with the highest-grade shotgun on the market?  Umph.” 

His smile stretched wider as she surveyed the aisles, trying to decide which to investigate first.  

“Do we need to discuss that time we visited that candy shop in Val Royeaux?” she reminded him as he silently laughed at her.  

He held up his palms in surrender and volunteered to start on the opposite side of the store.

Shepard sighed in happiness and drifted towards a shotgun display. She spent nearly an hour happily reviewing the improvements in weapons technology since her time.  The Andromedans seemed to have a marked preference for energy weapons, but as a biotic, Shepard had always chosen old-fashioned kinetic slugs to get the job done.  She chose a new shotgun for herself and selected a very restrained sidearm for Solas, imagining that she would have the time, eventually, to teach him to shoot something with a laser sight and minimal kickback.  At that point, she realized she had lost track of the elf somewhere within the warehouse. 

She sternly reminded herself that Solas had been taking care of Solas for longer than she’d been alive, but she was feeling more than a little apprehensive by the time she finally located him in an aisle devoted to tactical breastplates.  

The breastplates in question were being modeled by two young asari maidens.  Their attention was entirely fixed on Solas, who, if Shepard were being honest, did not appear to mind.  

“And my sister has this one, but I think it makes her look blocky,” the first said, twirling in a piece of red fire-resistant armor.  She had dark blue skin and slim silver eyebrow-marks. Her face was intent as she looked at Solas- a hunting beast on the trail of “that thing I haven’t fucked yet.” 

“Aesia!” the second squealed, knocking the first asari with her hip.  “She’s awful, isn’t she?” the second asari appealed to Solas.  “It looks better when you wear it over the specialty wicking sublayer.  I have it on back-order.” 

“But what do you think, Solas?” the first broke in, batting her purple eyelashes at him.  “Does it look better on me than the Gosan 3000X?  Do you want to see that one again?”

Oh, so there had already been multiple rounds of this?  And they were on a first-name basis.  

Solas opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again when he saw Shepard.

“I find it’s best to choose tactical armor based on its repellant properties, rather than its…attractive ones,” Shepard broke in. 

The two asari turned to give Shepard an assessing look from head to toe.  The first snorted and turned back to Solas, but the second gave Shepard a familiar look.  That look, all wrinkled nose, quirking lips, and lowered brow-ridges, said, “if you don’t ruin this for me, you can join too.”  

Well, Shepard had looks to give too.  The one she leveled at both asari, as she slid her hand around Solas’ forearm, said, “mine.”  Also, “have you ever faced an asari commando unit before?  I have.  They’re dead now.”  And also, “a few people have seen me in action.  They seemed impressed.” 

That last might have been overkill, because the asari blanched and lifted their hands in surrender before skittering away to another part of the store. 

Solas watched them go, face inscrutable. 

Shepard folded her arms across her chest and regarded him. 

“I can’t take you anywhere,” she said, finally smiling despite herself.

“What?” Solas asked, feigning confusion.  “They seemed like perfectly nice young ladies with a number of reasonable questions about chestplates.” 

“Oh sure, chestplates,” Shepard said, rubbing her forehead.  “Yeah, it all seems perfectly reasonable until somehow you’re the only human in a threesome and you realize you forgot to look up the location of anyone else’s erogenous zones.”

Solas snorted.  “I am so lucky to be accompanied by the voice of experience,” he told Shepard. 

“Just saving you the time,” Shepard said as she piloted her partner to the checkout scanner.  “If you want to have an alien threesome, go hanar or go home.  Asari maidens are a complete cliché.” 

“Remind me of the hanar?” he asked as they left.  “What does one do with the tentacles?”