#also itha belongs to my partner! shes a mage & shes baby & i love her

[commanderkallian]

wip wednesday!

i cant believe i have smth to post two weeks in a row! i havent written more than like half a drabble at a time since middle school, dragon age rly is wild. thank you @hawkeish for tagging me again, i tag @bunjolras @ringofdoubt & @elvhenwolf ! no pressure if you dont want to, & if i didnt tag you feel free to say i did anyway and tag me in it, id love to read everyones work!

posting an extra long one today because next wednesday is my birthday(!) and i dont wanna leave yall hanging if i dont make it online 😅

so uh, take some post-blackwalls personal quest inquisitor stress, because im playing mostly blind and having blackwall (unintentionally) come so thoroughly for taralens life threw me for a loop and i had to write smth for it

I killed innocent people. One moment of courage will not make up for that.

Up in his grand Skyloft bedroom, the Inquisitor paces. Every moment since he walked out of that Val Royeaux prison, his thoughts have been circling madly, fixated on the tiniest turns of phrase. It had to be a jab at him, couldn’t be a coincidence, Bl- Rainier had to have figured him out and, on death row, decided to let him know just what he thought about this whole ruse.

When it came to light, I ran. Pretending to be a better man.

He’s not a better man. Blackwall is a better man. Rainier is.. a man who is better than he was. But Taralen? What makes a better man when the one who committed the crime wasn’t one? He wonders, not for the first time, if everything about him is fake. Maybe this was all conjured up in that Dalish camp, his mind trying desperately to distance itself from what its body had done. Something heavy twists in his gut and his steps falter. Is the feeling genuine distress from the thought or is it just an admittance of guilt? How can he know? He starts walking again.

One mistake, and everything I worked for fell apart. I betrayed the Empire and assassinated a general. All for gold.

All for gold. One mistake. Is it all for gold when you need the gold to survive? Rainier had respect, a station of his own, power and command and purpose. He didn’t need like Taralen had. What did Taralen have without that job? Wrinkled fingers and sewing needles? Saving for a year just to have one sovereign? He’d be married off by now, still working even with a bairn on each hip. 

His stomach twists again, something cold and hard and aching settling there, and he has to open up those grand doors for the breeze so he doesn’t heave right there on the perfect stone floor. He’d’ve made a terrible mother. (a redheaded mother guarantees a brat.) There would’ve been nobody to interrupt Corypheus but him. Both feel equally important to have avoided. Selfish. Selfish.

They believe it because that’s what you tell them.

There was no other choice to be made. A Nevarran woman in his face, threatening him and shouting about something he’d done, someone he’d killed, and he panicked. Only mostly a lie. It had almost been true, once. Something safe he knew how to play along with for the most part. But then it grew and they grew and so did the questions.

(A Dalish girl, kneeling beside him at the river, trying to help him decide as they washed. Belavahn, she suggests teasingly, one with many questions. He’d flicked water at her face and she’d laughed. What does Itha mean? he asked after. One who sees. It’s not for you, though. It’s mine. A tongue stuck out at him. His turn to laugh.)

When they ask his surname, he does not know how to say he never had one, so he says Belavahn instead. A good name for an Inquisitor. Too good. Nobody has said anything yet but someday, somebody will notice and point fingers and it’ll all crumble down.

(I apologize, Inquisitor, but we were unable to contact or even locate a Clan Belavahn. Fear crawling up his throat. Caught. Have to fix it. Belavahn is.. my family name. My clan was Lavellan. Writing a desperate letter that night, begging please, Itha, ask the Keeper to play along. I will grant Clan Lavellan any aid they need, just do me this one final favor and say I’m one of you. The response a month later, simple. Lethallin, you always were.)

And so he’s laughed off questions about his childhood, lied about his age, been brutally honest about how little he was able to bring to the clan, that’s why I hadn’t earned my vallaslin yet, I would’ve gotten it after the Conclave if I’d brought home good information about what was to become of the Dalish mages, and dug himself deeper and deeper into his hole. He fears it may become his tomb. Not burned, because the Dalish don’t do that, but thrown deep underground and covered up forever. Nevarrans don’t burn their dead either, he thinks, then tries to stop thinking because he really would prefer if he could stop feeling ill soon.