#and death itself paused to watch the tide tremble in her wake

[acourtofquestions]

The fool didn't realize who he faced. What he faced. That it wasn't a fire-breathing queen bound in iron who charged at him, but an assassin. Even as he ran for her, Lorcan could only gape at what unfolded.

[royalstorm]

better off   *   xiaoqing // ; xiao x keqing //

content warning : pda, negative thought patterns

Xiao's infatuation is not a slow boil. His heartbreak is.

It's a realization that had dawned on him months ago. He vowed to himself to keep it tucked away, on the backburner left to simmer. To worry about an uncertain future would be to neglect the demands of the present, is what he told himself. He had believed it. He had been pretty convincing back then.

Then, last week...November 20.

In the air that day was a hum of excitement, one that persisted in spite of his itching ears. The people amongst him, too—grinning, giggling, resonating on a frequency that he was tone deaf to.

Even the thrumming in his own chest was akin to a death march.

Her voice had been his only saving grace—the symphony stringing away con brio, above all the noise. And when he offered her his present — clumsily wrapped, barely held together with a ribbon — she graced him with a "thank you" that silenced the discontent in his mind — the darkness in his heart — if only for a moment.

But that same night, the realization Xiao had forced down all those months ago resurfaced, bubbling with a vengeance. How he wished he had just rested, instead of patrolling where he had not been needed. Maybe then, he wouldn't have had to stand testament to the tragedy he came upon on Mt. Tianheng. It was a simple tragedy, but a tragedy nevertheless.

Raining down on him, like a hailstorm, were three eagles — all skewered by a singular, steely arrow.

It was when they reached ground zero — nothing short of battered, bloody feathers at his feet — that it was he who'd taken a shot to the chest.

Memento mori.

"Remember you must die."

Remember she must die.

Flash forward to the adeptus' current state: a state of motion. Running. Practically flying. For the past thousand or so years, all he knew to do was stay still. Physically, he was and continues to be on the move. Evil never sleeps, after all.

But spiritually and emotionally, where it truly mattered, he had been complacent: to the shifting sands, to the rising tides, to the erosion of Liyue's many mountain ranges.

It's useless, he chides himself. A loud thwack! punctures the air as he descends, polearm first, from a rooftop to the cobblestone ground below. He rises from his squat form to better regard his surroundings.

To think that the esteemed Yuheng of the Liyue Qixing would willingly live somewhere ordinary...remote, even. Indeed, he's still roaming the streets of Liyue Harbor, but he would've been fooled quite easily had someone told him differently.

"I don't care to live lavish, even if it's something I am able to afford," is what she told him once, when they were discussing philosophy. "Once in a while, it does you no harm to treat yourself, but it feels ... unnecessary flaunting that which so many can’t have themselves, and—" She had chuckled here. "—Never mind. You get my point, don’t you?”

Xiao keeps that thought at the forefront of his mind as he nears the front door. Upon reaching it, he silently thanks the archons for her residence's ease of access: on the first floor and as one of the very first units of the complex.

Lifting a hand, he knocks once...twice...

The door handle on the opposite end almost immediately rattles in response.

"Xiao?"

Keqing's voice is a colorful blend of concerned and (pleasantly) surprised. She fidgets with what looked to be an empty rice bowl in her hands.

"Keqing," he acknowledges, amber eyes suddenly skittering to the ground. Ignoring the heat rising to his cheeks, he follows up with, "My apologies for the unexpected visit. I hope you don't mind."

From his periphery, Xiao can see that she's still fiddling with the bowl — shifting it, inclining it, turning it upside down and right back up. He isn't sure what it means.

"No, of course I don't mind," she reassures him. Even as his eyes avoid hers, he can tell she's being earnest. Something soft and warm to the touch permeates the fabric of his glove. Eyes darting to the side, he sees her hand clasping his — on the verge of tugging him her way.

The "come inside" catches in Keqing's breath as the adeptus simply allows himself to be ushered in. Bowl now nestled solely in her other hand, she shuts the door closed with a foot. His hand still in hers, she then leads him down the main corridor and into the kitchen, where she'd been enjoying a late night dinner.

They seat themselves in her dining room, chairs directly across one another's. He ignores the arrangement of food scattering the table in favor of examining the rest of her home. The walls are relatively bare, save for two swords displayed in their respective racks front and center. Most, if not all, of the furniture looks decent enough—nothing too gaudy or flashy, though nothing secondhand, either—but even their presence is minimal ... underwhelming for a common civilian, let alone an aristocrat.

"Sorry if you were expecting something more grand." Keqing's voice rustles him from his observations.

Xiao rekindles the will to look her in the eyes. He attempts to ignore the dark circles weighing them down. "There is no need for you to apologize. I quite like your home, actually." When she chances a dubious brow in his direction, he adds, "It seems comfortable."

Keqing exhales a breath that is half scoff, half laugh. “Great save.” She props herself up on the dinner table and begins adding contents from each dish into her bowl. Xiao watches her from his periphery, realizing that this may have been one of the first times he’d seen her eat.

“You are free to help yourself to whatever you please.”

This time, he visibly flinches — once again, roused by the Yuheng’s voice.

“I will have to politely decline.” And before she can protest, he follows up with, “Adepti do not require the same amount of nourishment needed by human beings.”

Keqing’s shoulders roll into a lazy shrug. The sound of chopsticks scraping porcelain rings in the air. “So be it. Just know that the offer is yours for the taking whenever.”

For the next few minutes, the pair sits in silence — one that is only curtailed by the occasional sound of Keqing’s chopsticks against her bowl. Silences between them have been comfortable, for the most part...perhaps not in the beginning — back when they could not yet see eye to eye, back when they found faults within each other, back when they could not acknowledge those same faults within themselves — but that tension came to pass the moment their fondness for each other began to bloom...as friends and then, eventually, as...more.

Tonight, the silence feels especially oppressive, perhaps even more so than it did when they first got acquainted with one another. And as it continues to crescendo, looming over them like gallows, Xiao can only assume that she feels similarly.

”Keqing–“

”Why have you come here tonight?”

Xiao freezes, stunned. Consider the image of a deer in the headlights — not only only the fear and the wide eyes, but the acceptance of a certain, untimely fate. In hindsight, it’s foolish for him to react so severely. Hadn’t he paid her this visit for a pressing reason?

Or perhaps he still didn’t want to accept that pressing reason himself?

He’s too quiet. He hesitates for too long. He is always too quiet and hesitating for too long. The sound of a bowl settling atop mahogany, chopsticks following suit, fills his ears. With bated breath, the adeptus feels her presence shift from the seat across his to standing right beside him.

It takes everything in him not to pivot.

“Xiao.” Keqing’s voice is firmer now...still gentle, but far more stalwart in intention. His eyes glaze over briefly, searching hers, finding in them the stubborn concern he’d grown to cherish so much.

When he still offers her no reply, she lifts a hand to his arm, fingers gently running over the exposed skin. “I know you aren’t just here for the sake of being here.” Keqing continues skimming his arm with that feather light touch, just barely cognizant of the slight bumps left in its wake. “After all, it’s a Thursday night. You know better than anyone that I like to spend these nights in solitude.” Her hand halts upon contacting his bird bone wrist.

The adeptus feels his mouth dry at the tenderness of it all, sucking in a breath once her fingertips stop at his wrist, a hair shy out of his reach. He wonders if intimacy would always feel this...strange. Exhilarating. Or was this merely her Vision’s power at work? She is an Electro user, after all...

“Please talk to me.” There’s a meek lilt in Keqing’s voice that coerces Xiao to not only look up, but to also maintain his hold on her gaze. How pathetic, the way he can stare at hell itself square in the eye but could barely muster the courage to expend even a glance her way.

“I–“ Pause. Falter. Swallowing thickly, Xiao rises from his seat. He slowly takes the hand adorning his wrist into his own — intertwining the fingers one by one, marveling at how perfectly they fit together.

Then, bowing his head and releasing a sigh, he finds the courage to speak his piece — to voice his pressing reason...

“You are better off without me.”

Xiao feels the hand in his go limp.

”What? What do you mean?” There’s an incredulity that leaks into the Yuheng’s tone that he isn’t familiar with. He doesn’t like it.

”I am not worthy of you, Keqing. What we have, it cannot be.” What vile things to say. What vile, disgusting things. The words lapping his tongue taste almost as bitter as the blood he’d once shed, so he does exactly what he did all those years ago.

He gulps it down.

”You deserve better. You deserve the world. I don’t say this with the intention of discrediting myself. But I–“ Xiao trembles in spite of himself. He feels her other hand cup the small of his back. “–I am not capable of offering you all that you deserve, or even half of that amount.”

He doesn’t quite know how he sounds at that moment, let alone how he looks, but as he feels Keqing’s arms adjust to wrap around his frame, he figures it can’t be good.

”I don’t understand you sometimes,” she whispers into the crook of his neck. “You say you don’t mean to sell yourself short, yet that’s exactly what it sounds like you are doing.” She squeezes him softly before leaning further into the embrace. “Besides, who are you to tell me what I do and do not deserve? Who is anyone to decide that? Shouldn’t that decision be mine and mine alone?”

Whenever she talks like that, Xiao finds it difficult to fathom her mortality...to grasp the idea that she would one day be nothing but ashes at his feet. Yet, as he holds her, and as she holds him, her breath, her small frame, and the bray of her human heart become all the more clear to him.

”I suppose you’re right. Forgive me. This is novel territory for someone such as myself.” The adeptus feels her form loosen as she chuckles. He rests his chin upon her shoulder. “But still, I can’t help but feel that the life you lead has far more meaning than mine.”

Xiao withdraws from their embrace, if only to get a full glimpse of her face. Noticing the hints of tears pooling at the corner of one eye, he takes a thumb and lightly brushes it away.

”But you are the protector of Liyue, handpicked by Rex Lapis himself.”

Classic Keqing. Always so quick to counter him. He begins trailing his thumb down her cheek — slowly, softly. Her eyes reflexively draw closed. “While that may be so, my time here knows no limits. I can afford to be complacent. But you–“ Xiao pauses again. At this point, his thumb is bordering the curve of her jaw and her bottom lip. “–Your time in this world is finite. As a result, you cannot afford to spend it with regrets.” Now, it’s his turn to shut his eyes. He bows his head again. “I fear that may come to pass if you continue to involve yourself with me.”

The Yuheng allows her eyes to flutter half-open. She too bows her head, if to just press her forehead to his. “You don’t know that for sure.” Lifting a hand, she rests it on top of his. She prods his thumb so that it rests on the flush red of her lip, right where it meets her skin. “Even knowing the fate of our bond, much of the future is still uncertain.”

Xiao‘s head dips lower. Their noses brush. He can feel her breath hitch. “I understand that better than most. Nothing in this world is completely certain. Even the word of our gods is something that, at times, must be taken with a grain of salt.” He almost smiles saying that. You taught me this yourself. His thumb begins gingerly grazing her bottom lip. “But wouldn’t you want to pursue that which would yield you the most certainty?” Xiao can sense his feelings going awry once more. He breathes deeply and prolongs the exhale that follows, as if to ground himself. “That includes entering a relationship with...another mortal. Someone who can provide for you. Someone who is always present. Someone...whose love will not be lost to the whims of time.” He sighs in spite of himself, consciously commanding that his voice stay as level as possible. “Is that not what you want?”

Not even a second elapses before Keqing scoffs. Whether it’s ironic or not is completely lost on the adeptus, but what he does know for sure is the feeling of his other hand being claimed by hers — of it being lifted to her face, of it cupping her cheek.

”Do you even hear yourself right now? I’m not sure whether to call you foolish or stubborn, but that doesn’t matter right now.” She releases a breath. “What matters is you knowing, with absolute certainty, that no, isn’t at all what I want.” Keqing’s face nears his even more so. Lips, parted. Eyes, half-lidded. Xiao’s thumb moves to frame the curve of her chin.

”What I want is you.” Their lips brush for a fraction of a second. Her breath is a strange comfort, hot in his mouth. “Xiao, I choose you. For better or for worse. I want to spend this lifetime with you ... and if not that, then at the very least, every second of  the time we’ve been allotted with each other. Nothing can hope to alter those facts — nothing except how you decide to proceed with this information.”

He opts to respond by, at long last, closing the last bit of distance that separates them. Lips pressed against lips, body pressed against body, hands pressed against hands.

They need not talk even after they pull away from each other, the tingling in their lips and blush sweeping their cheeks speaking volumes for themselves. Moments later, they’re close again – practically insoluble as they envelope the other in their arms, as their heads settle warmly atop each other’s shoulder.

There, they stay for a while.

There, they reconcile with their comfortable silence.

[sinsbymanka]

Update: Girl with the Arrow Tattoo Chapter 34!

Chapter 34: The Rebirth

Full Story at AO3

(Remarkably little angst. Mostly fluff and existential crisis. You’ve all earned it after the last few chapters.) 

Finding her had been a miracle. Maria’s small, crumpled form had barely been visible underneath the snow clinging to her hair, her clothes. When Varric spotted crimson in the beam of his phone’s weak flashlight, he raced toward it without thought, wishing, hoping, wanting… praying they weren’t too late. Her form felt stiff as ice beneath his fingers, worse, she didn’t respond to her name in his mouth, didn’t move until he tightened his hold on her. 

The instant his fingers curled into her shoulder, she made a small, broken sound. Not quite a whimper, but not a scream either. She shuddered under his hands and bucked against his grip weakly. Her eyes gazed ahead, unseeing, into the darkness while she struggled helplessly against him like a bird beating her wings against a cage. His stomach dropped, his fingers gently circling her delicate wrists while she tried to push him away. A quiet sob escaped Maria’s lips and… 

It broke him. Just a little. He wasn’t ashamed to admit it. 

“Maria, stop.” He pleaded into her freezing ear. She shivered, but some of the fight seemed to bleed out of her. “It’s just me. It’s just me, we’re gonna take care of you, baby.” 

Her faint struggles began to cease so he released her wrists and gently wrapped his arms around her waist, cradled her to his chest. “I won’t hurt you.” He promised to the shivering, half-conscious miracle in his arms. “I won’t ever hurt you, Maria.” 

Somewhere above them, Nyx cawed loudly, repetitively, sounding the alarm for the entire rescue party. Maria collapsed against his chest with a broken, weary sigh that could have been his name, but he couldn’t tell. There were other voices calling to each other in the darkness, growing awareness that someone had found something, although who or what was still unknown. They could only hope.

But hope had gotten them this far.

“Varric!” Dorian’s voice cried out from the slope somewhere above him. “Varric, where in the blighted hell are you?” 

“Here!” He pulled his face away from Maria’s chilled skin to yell up over his shoulder. “I’ve got her!” 

He pressed his lips against her temple, one hand gently pushing back the stiff, frozen hair framing her face. He could taste the iron of blood on his lips, her skin frigid underneath his mouth. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” He whispered softly. 

Cassandra sent up a prayer of weary gratitude. Dorian appeared beside him like he’d emerged from the shadows themselves, his gleaming dark eyes exhausted and panic stricken while he examined the shuddering woman in Varric’s arms. 

“Venhedis.” Dorian cursed. “Where is Blackwall?” 

“I can carry her.” Bull rumbled. 

“Perhaps. However, we did remove five bullets from your body. I am uncertain if you should even have joined us.” Solas reached past Varric and laid a gentle hand over Maria’s shoulder. The elf’s frown said everything Varric didn’t want to know. “We need to get her back. I cannot treat these injuries, I lack the skill…” 

“Don’t die, you.” Sera blurted, half command, half plea. “Fix her up, right? Elfy shite magic can…” 

“Here.” Blackwall leaned down low, arms extended. 

“Wait.” Solas ordered. His eyes were glowing, a soft green light flickering. “I can dull the pain, put her to sleep, and remove the blood from her lungs so she doesn’t drown in it. It will make travel easier, the rest…” 

Varric could feel the magic working, Maria’s form melting against his, boneless, finally giving into exhaustion and unconsciousness. Solas pulled his hand back and nodded briskly to Blackwall. “Now.” 

Varric didn’t want to let her go. The last time he let her go she… he bit back the recrimination, reminded himself that the snow was only up to Blackwall’s knees instead of his ass, and the most important thing was to get Maria back to camp before she finished dying on them. He shifted and she slipped out of his arms like water until the human lifted her, gentle as a sleeping child, into the air. Bull peered down into her face, rumbled something Varric couldn’t quite make out. 

“She will be fine.” Cassandra stated firmly. “Andraste is with her.” 

Nobody could ignore the triumphant certainty in the Seeker’s voice. Varric almost bemoaned that Cassandra could come through this with renewed faith in her Maker, in some sort of crazy plan. But Maria Cadash survived the vortex, time travel, a demon, a dragon, and an avalanche. Varric… wasn’t quite sure what to even chalk that up to beyond divine intervention. 

“What would be more helpful than Andraste at this moment would be modern medicine, a healer, and removing these clothes before she succumbs to frostbite.” Solas remarked dryly. 

“Cold. Bitter. Biting.” Cole murmured. “Endless. Alone at the edge of the abyss. Falling. Frightened.” 

“We’ve got her now, kid.” Varric reassured him as their search party began the perilous trek back. “We’ve got her.” 

“Yes.” Cole agreed fervently. “They tried to burn her. Bury her. But the ashes were warm and the stone belongs to her family’s hearth. He didn’t know she’d rise.” 

--

“Get her down.” The doctor ordered tersely. “This damn woman. If she’s not falling out of the bleeding sky, she’s stumbling back with hypothermia and Maker knows how many broken ribs.” 

Blackwall lowered Maria onto the cot with great, tender care. For a perfect moment of stillness, it was just Maria alone on the thin bed like a sacrifice left unattended on an altar. Then both the doctor and healer swarmed over her, checking her pulse, listening to her labored breathing. 

“You’re not going to believe this.” Bea trembled beside Varric, his hand on her arm the only thing restraining her from elbowing both healer and doctor out of the way. She had one fist at her lips, white knuckles pressed to paler lips. “This isn’t her idea of a good time either.” 

“Coulda fooled me.” The doctor huffed, pulling the zipper on the sodden, blood spattered jacket. “I’m gonna need a knife to get these clothes off her. They’re soaking wet.” 

Maria’s head lolled to the side and Cole produced his switchblade nearly immediately. The Elven healer snatched it with a reproachful, wary gaze in the kid’s direction before she began sawing through the thin cotton t-shirt. 

“I do not believe we need an audience for this.” The Seeker said sternly. Varric deigned to ignore her even though he knew the statement was meant for him. “A few of us should stay, but surely…” 

“Ria isn’t modest. Or shy.” Bea muttered, eyes fixed on the pale skin slowly exposed under the tattered shirt, more blue and purple than cream. Varric’s stomach rolled at the mess of bruises and scrapes. 

“Varric.” Cassandra snapped impatiently. “I will not risk your…” 

If she accused him of leering one more time he’d…

“But he’s seen her bare.” Cole interrupted, confused. “Warm. Wanting. Willing and wicked and…” 

Well, he could always count on Cole. Bea rolled her eyes and shot Varric a rather reproachful glare, but honestly it was almost worth it to hear the sharp click of Cassandra’s jaw slamming shut. 

“Do hold that thought. I’ll be rather interested in it if she doesn’t choke to death on her own blood.” Dorian shoved past, holding a sturdy pile of fleece blankets. 

“She’s not… she can’t...” Bea’s voice cracked on the words, swinging helplessly around the triage scene unspooling in front of them.

“Not on my watch at any rate. Not after getting us out of that Tevinter shitstorm.” The elf muttered, peeling away the stiff fabric. Her hand glowed as she pressed it to Maria’s skin and paused, seeming to listen to her injuries. “Five fractured ribs of varying severity. At least one punctured her lung.” 

“Sparkler is being unnecessarily dramatic.” Varric soothed with a stern, warning glance leveled at the Tevinter witch’s back. “She’s going to wake up spitting fire, you watch.” 

He didn’t know if he was trying to convince Bea or himself. Maria looked just as small as she had the first time he saw her, unconscious again, although at least she didn’t appear to be flickering in and out of reality itself this time. Back then, he’d felt bad for the poor woman who had been pulled off the mountain and he certainly hadn’t wanted anything to happen to her, but now…

Varric couldn’t bear watching her lay so still as the doctor shouted about lacerations on her head, the healer’s hands glowing blue to stitch up bone and lung. His stomach twisted into anxious knots, thoughts spiraling, conjuring scenarios where she never woke. Where he never held her again, never… 

“Lacerations are minor. Burn on her palm.” The doctor rattled off to the healer. “If you can fix her ribs, it’ll be the hypothermia to worry about next.” 

“Can’t help there.” The Healer muttered as she worked. “Not trained to do anything about that. I could try raising her blood temperature but I’m as likely to cook her…” 

Bea shuddered and the doctor took the switchblade, hacking at the waistband of Maria’s jeans. “I need a warm compress. One of you bleedin’ witches need to heat up some water and shove it in a damn bottle.” 

“No need to be rude.” Dorian huffed. “Vivienne…” 

“I will search for a container, since you are full of hot air darling. See if you can heat those blankets up a bit, hm?” 

“All these clothes need to come off. They’re soaked through.” The doctor pulled the ruined denim away from Maria’s hips, a cruel parody of the way Varric once peeled them off. He shut his eyes for a steadying moment and swallowed against the rising tide of complex, terrifying emotions. 

“There.” The healer said gently. “She’ll be sore for a few days, at least, but she’ll live. Come here, feel.” 

Bea tugged against his iron grip and Varric relaxed his hold enough to let her slip through his fingers. He opened bleary eyes and watched Bea press her palm over her sister’s gently rising and falling abdomen. The terrible rattle had ceased, vanished into the ether. Bea’s shook her head, voice small. “She’s so cold.” 

“Not for long.” The doctor muttered, pulling one of the gently steaming blankets from Dorian’s arms and pinning Varric with his piercing, slightly insane gaze. “You’ll do. Come here.” 

Varric hesitated. Just long enough for a rather large, he’d bet solid money Qunari, arm to shove him forward. Varric scowled back at Bull, but the doctor kept talking, “Body heat to insulate. You’re rather sturdy and you’re not too tall for the cot. Up you get.” 

Oh. Oh shit. “What?” He asked, the question semi-strangled, the thought of curling up next to Maria’s solid, albeit frozen, form enough to render him temporarily, and possibly for the first time, speechless. 

“Absolutely not.” Cassandra scowled, flushing pink to the very roots of her hair. “It is inappropriate and scandalous. The Herald…” 

“Right then. She’ll just freeze solid while we argue about propriety.” The doctor declared waspishly. “We can hope holy Andraste thaws her out.” 

“I certainly don’t want to end up on the wrong side of Cassandra’s ire…” Dorian looked entirely too smug for Varric’s comfort level. “But this seems like an excellent idea. Finish unbuttoning that shirt, Varric. Better shuck the pants too, you’ve got snow all over them.” 

“Ugh.” Sera sniffed, turning her face pointedly away. “Not watchin’ this show.”  

“I cannot…” Cassandra’s voice raised, the start of a rather fine shouting match nobody had time for. 

“I’m sorry.” Bea’s voice didn’t rise at all. It stayed perfectly, completely level. The hair on Varric’s neck stood up regardless and he spared a glance for the woman staring Cassandra down with abject fury. “I thought my mother was dead. Please. Continue arguing about the fucking scandal while my sister loses her toes.”  

Cassandra’s mouth moved, but nothing intelligible came out. Satisfied, Bea turned her sharp as knives gaze to him. “Pants off.” 

She’d given a steely command, one that left no room for negotiation. When Varric didn’t quite move fast enough, Bea’s voice dropped even further, to what he suspected was an even more dangerous octave. “I’m not asking again.” 

Varric wasn’t certain she’d actually asked the first time. “Andraste’s ass.” He grumbled, reaching up to begin unbuttoning his shirt, hastily discarding it on a stack of crates. “Can I keep my damn boxers on or are we…” 

Bea promptly made up her mind to ignore him. “Roll her onto her side.” The doctor advised the healer. “Gently. No use jarring that head.” 

“Varric.” Vivienne’s voice trilled from behind him and Varric swore under his breath. “I take it since you’re undressing that means you’ve finally come to your senses about this outfit.” 

“Everyone’s a damn comedian as soon as the dwarf gets naked.” Varric huffed, unbuttoning his pants. “Let me know if any ladies see something they like.” 

In front of him, they shifted Maria’s nearly nude form onto her side, covering her with the first steaming blanket, lifting the barest corner for him to slither in beside her. Somehow, this seemed far more intimate than the fact that his mouth had been slanted over hers, their tongues twisted together, his face between her legs and his hands cupping her gorgeous breasts. Perhaps it was simply the aching vulnerability, the mottled fresh bruises covering all the skin he’d traced and kissed. 

Maybe it was the blissfully empty expression on her face making her look so much younger, the fresh faced girl in her old photos. The one whose life still may have worked out the way she wanted in a better world, a kinder one. 

If she was brave enough to face down a fucking dragon, he could lay beside her, keep her warm. That had to be the easier job. He definitely shouldn’t be envying her the heroic showdown with the demon that nearly snatched her away.

As calmly and smoothly as he could, with false confidence born of years hiding inner turmoil, he slipped onto the stiff cot and curled against her while they draped a blanket over them. She was icy, freezing to the touch against his skin. His hissed at the initial contact, but he ignored the discomfort and gently, careful of the newly mended ribs and all the terrifying bruises lining her skin, draped his arm over the dip of her waist. He shifted his hips until they fit snug against hers and slipped one arm slowly under her neck. 

The sharp bite of something ever colder than her skin sent him swearing. He shifted, gingerly withdrawing a tarnished silver chain from the space between them, the glimmering pendants nothing more than bits of ice against his fingers. 

His eyes focused on them with a start, at first in stunned disbelief, then in bewilderment. They weren’t pendants or charms, they were rings, a full damn set of wedding rings. There was a diamond large enough to make any debutante swoon and two plain, serviceable bands, a man’s and a woman’s. 

Bea made a choked gasp, hands freezing in the motion of smoothing the blanket over Maria’s shoulder. “Sodding Ancestors. I thought they’d be gone for sure, I thought…” 

Varric gently slid his fingers along the chain, trying to ignore the sharp burst of curiosity. There was zero chance that Fynn Dunhark legally married Maria Cadash, that information would have been in the court records and media coverage for sure. But… he could see how legalities didn’t matter. Not when you were young, not when the woman you loved agreed to take off from everything she knew and make a new life somewhere else. 

Fynn Dunhark may only have had Maria Cadash for a short period of time before his untimely demise. But, he’d fully had his woman, no half-baked life full of lies and secrets. Varric would have sacrificed a lot for that same certainty. 

He’d have taken a bullet too. 

Varric unclasped the necklace with a deft twist of his fingers and deposited the cold chain in Bea’s extended palm. She closed her fingers over them and brought her tight fist to her lips. “I didn’t realize she was wearing them. She’d have been… she’d have been fucking devastated to lose them.” 

The tremor in Bea’s usually nonchalant voice told him that Maria wouldn’t have been the only one distraught. 

“It’s alright Mittens.” Varric angled his form around Maria’s, tipped his forehead against her hair, and closed his eyes. The scent of smoke and iron clung to her, a heady perfume of desperation and sheer, impossible survival. He fought the urge to press his palm more tightly over her abdomen, to drop his lips to her freckled shoulder and kiss each spot with silent, worshipful gratitude. 

To drop even lower and gently press his lips to the interlocking triangles of the carta branded on her shoulder. To make a silent, desperate promise that this time, that part of her life was over. There’d be no going back, no matter the cost. Not after… 

But this wasn’t the time, this wasn’t the place. Dorian balanced his warm bottle of water on the opposite side of Maria’s neck and very gently brushed his tanned fingers over her cheek. Varric smoothed away the scowl that twisted his features and the matching possessive lurch in his thoughts. Hopefully before anyone noticed. 

Instead, he splayed his fingers gently over the soft curve of her stomach. He focused on the gentle rise and fall, the ease of her breathing, so unlike the way she’d labored and gasped in his arms. Without much thought, and certainly without attempting to examine his motives, Varric brushed his thumb lightly, repetitively, in a small arc over her cold skin. 

Solas layered another blanket over top of them and looked to the doctor. “You said there was a burn in her palm?” 

“Odd one. Don’t see how she could've done it, but I guess I’ve got to get used to her doing weird shit, don’t I?” 

Bea snorted in abbreviated, but clear, agreement. 

“May I?” Solas asked cautiously. 

“Be my guest.” The doctor muttered. “Not much I can do for it with our general lack of supplies and I’d rather the damn healer deal with her brain than burns.” 

“Just swelling.” The Elven healer’s fingers lingered over Maria’s head, eyes continuing to monitor Bea’s barely concealed anxiety. “Nasty bump, that’s all. She’ll be right as rain, you’ll see.” 

With a mumbled apology, Solas’s hand lifted the blanket. Varric stilled his thumb, watching as Solas gently turned Maria’s palm in his. Varric could see the burn even through the halo of Maria’s hair, perfect and pristine, a spiraling pattern like a rising sun. 

Varric fought back his own shudder. “Chuckles, that’s not an accident.” 

Nothing so beautiful ever was. Solas ran his own fingers over it and frowned tightly. “Unfortunately,” He confessed, “I suspect you are correct.” 

“What is it?” Cassandra asked, peering suspiciously over Solas’s shoulder.

“The mark of the magic she survived in the vortex.” Solas ran his own thumb over her palm. The second he did, the burn illuminated with a dull, gentle flicker. Varric swore he saw flakes of golden light dancing under Maria’s skin through her veins. “That demon pulled it to the surface, perhaps in an attempt to wrench it from her.”

“It looks almost like the symbol of the Chantry.” Cassandra supplied with a rather firm amount of conviction lacing her voice.

She was right, to a point. It was certainly a sun, Varric would give her that, but beyond that Maria's brand bore little resemblance to the great glowing suns of the Chantry. Her’s had delicate, intricate knots laced within it. A pattern within a pattern, looking more like something Daisy would doodle than anything else. 

“A coincidence, nothing more.” Solas curled Maria’s small fingers over the mark like she clasped something precious within it. “It must have caused her great pain to have it brought to the surface like this.” 

He knew. He’d heard her screaming. Unable to help himself, he brushed his thumb over her skin again, an unsaid apology for leaving her at a monster’s mercy. 

“She’s tough.” Bea tightened her grip on the rings on her hand and lifted burning eyes to Solas. “Ria is tougher than anyone I know.” 

Solas smiled, both kind and sad. “Of that, I have little doubt. We would not be here otherwise.” 

xx

She awoke in pieces, not all at once. The first thing she noticed was the searing heat surrounding her, warmth bleeding through every inch of skin except the tip of her nose, which felt frozen solid. The blankets covering her were heavy weights keeping the sweltering heat in. 

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so warm, so cozy. She considered opening her eyes, but that seemed… too hard. Her head throbbed in warning so she kept them shut, shifting slightly off an aching hip to…

It was that tiny movement that revealed the second, more important thing. Maria Cadash was not alone in this horribly uncomfortable bed. Someone’s heavy arm rested over her bare skin, her wiggling pressed her firmly against a broad, immovable chest, rough hair prickling her skin. She froze, keeping her eyes shut resolutely, trying to make sense of what had happened. 

Her first thought, one that nearly had her leaping from the bed, was that she’d fallen asleep in Dwyka’s bed, fallen into this pantomime of intimacy while she’d been asleep. It happened before, and somehow that was always worse than laying perfectly still until dawn, waiting for the sun to rise to make her escape. 

But the hand on her stomach was different than Dwyka’s. Undoubtedly Dwarven given the size, but less weather roughened, the callouses in the wrong place, and draped gently over her waist. There was nothing possessive about it, only warm reassurance. 

Fynn, her gut clenched as his name rattled in her head, but that wasn’t right either. Fynn’s hands had been strong, ages practicing the piano at his mother’s insistence after all, but they’d never grown rough with any kind of manual labor or…

Writing. 

Those were callouses from pen and pencil, she’d developed some of her own during her school days, before she’d decided that fighting and crime left better paying marks instead. 

With that thought, bits and pieces began to drift back. Their desperate kiss in the kitchen. His broad arms effortlessly lifting her off her feet, his mouth…

His amazingly talented mouth. The very thought sent a spike of heat right through her in spite of her aching head and stiff limbs. Somebody must have spiked her drink, because clearly she’d been drunk, she couldn’t even remember the main event. Out of all the terrible things that happened to her, that seemed most unfair. If she’d made the critical error of falling into this horribly uncomfortable bed with Varric Tethras, she wanted to at least have the good bits to cling to. 

Why was her bed so uncomfortable? Sodding hell, she felt like she was sleeping on a prison cot. She shifted again, as gingerly as she could, brain trying to fire off what exactly to do next. She needed to open her eyes, needed to break this spell, send him packing, and yet…

And yet. 

She was so tired. Her eyelids felt heavy, her limbs leaden. His breath was warm on her shoulder, his forehead tucked against her hair. She was pressed tightly against him and he felt solid against her, a bulwark against the darkness nibbling at the edges of her mind. She’d been so afraid, so alone, and he…

Emotions she didn’t quite understand bubbled to the surface, fear squeezing her throat. It had been so dark and it hurt. She was so confused, her addled mind trying to keep up, and she didn’t… 

“I’ve got you.” Varric whispered against her temple. “I’ve got you.” 

Everything else returned like a punch in the gut. Haven. The templars, the dragon, Corypheus. Her march through the snow to her doom. Her eyes flew open, startled, taking in the cold dark night surrounding them. In her line of sight, Bea curled up in a tiny ball, her head resting against Bull’s solid chest. He slept too, leaning on the pole holding this makeshift shelter up, eye closed. One arm wrapped around Bea’s shoulders, the other around Sera’s while she snored lightly. 

Alive. Alive, they were alive and so was she. She closed her eyes again, dizzy with relief. If they were alive, then it would be okay. It had to be. 

She could go back to sleep. It would be so damn easy to. 

Behind her, Varric shifted near imperceptibly and Maria’s breath hitched. Sweet Ancestors, his bare legs were tangled up against hers too and…

Maker. He couldn’t be completely naked, could he? Her mind struggled to process the feel of him, but she was still wearing her damn underwear, the underwire of the bra poking against her uncomfortably to remind her of that fact. He had to be wearing his. 

How in the void had this even happened? How had Bea allowed this to happen? Her little sister could hardly be called part of the Varric Tethras fan club. 

Boxers or briefs? Maria’s inner voice questioned, off on it’s own little tangent while she struggled to make sense of the crazy series of events that ended up with her snuggled up quite cozily to Varric fucking Tethras. 

She shifted again, pressing back gently. Boxer briefs, she thought. Had to be. She twisted her hips again, just to be sure…

“Princess.” Varric huffed gently in her ear, voice sleep roughened and deliciously husky. He pressed gently on her stomach and stifled a low laugh in her shoulder. “You keep moving like that, I can’t be held liable for what happens next.”

She fought back a delighted shiver without much success. She felt Varric’s response in the loose sweep of his fingers up her abdomen and the slight pull of his hips away from hers. She felt more loss at that than she wanted to admit. And a brief, electric jolt that was only barely smothered by fatigue. 

“Are we safe?” Her own voice came out hoarse. 

“Seems that way. Been a whole twenty four hours since we ran out of Haven, beautiful. No sign of anything chasing our ass. They probably figured we’d starve or freeze to death without them having to lift a finger.” 

Maybe everyone should have to sleep next to Varric, then, because the man was a furnace. She twisted to sit up and winced immediately, every muscle protesting the sudden movement. Her chest ached, her stomach ached, her arms and legs and…

The world tilted, spun, fuzzed a bit at the edges. 

Varric sat up far more successfully than she had, but she still managed to curl to face him. His amber eyes were dark in the weak light flickering around them in the darkness, lanterns and firelight, his glorious chest completely bare. 

Touch. A part of her commanded greedily. Her hand responded without her permission, lifting into the fraught, tense space between them. This all felt so surreal, part of a dream, and perhaps she hadn’t quite woken… 

“Careful with that one.” Varric’s eyes flicked to the palm of her hand and back to her eyes. “You’ve got some magic stuck in it.” 

Her fingers curled closed, protectively, and she pulled back. Yes. She remembered the sun caught in her palm, her flashlight in the darkness. With her fingers against it, she could feel it there, one more ache among all the others.

He’d burned it into her skin. Seared it to her flesh. Her heartbeat spiked, fear prickled through the exhaustion. “He put it there, he did something to me, he was...” 

There weren't any words. Varric could probably find them, but they escaped her. He’d been like a solid black hole in the universe, like a wound oozing pus and infection, like every nightmare she’d ever had all rolled into one. 

“I know.” Varric whispered, gently placing one of his hands on her shoulder and lightly guiding her back down. “We know. We know who it was. What he is.” 

“What?” She rasped. Varric sighed and made to tuck her smoothly back under the blankets. He was going to get up, going to leave her in the darkness and the cold with nothing but her thoughts and fears, oblivion circling the edges of her vision. The next word fell from her lips before she considered it fully. “Stay.” 

For a split second her words landed into the silence with all the elegance of a ticking time bomb. He stared at her, taken aback by the request she assumed. Certainly unsure how to handle a sick, broken creature clinging to him so selfishly. But she swallowed the tension, quirked her lips into the best smle she could manage. “Keep me warm and tell me a story.” 

Please. The unsaid word echoed in her chest. 

“It’s a shitty story, Princess.” Varric sighed, but he slipped back beneath the blanket, careful to leave a scant inch of sizzling air between their skin. “But I’ll try. It started with Hawke…” 

Varric spun Reyna Hawke into being as smoothly as if he’d done it a thousand times, conjuring the witch out of the freezing night air so vividly, Maria could see her the way he did. This wasn’t a woman lighting her own pyre in the ashes of Redcliffe, crazed and wounded with a manic gleam in her eye. This was a heroine. A champion. Varric’s champion. 

He told the story from where he’d entered it. Pulled out of bed by a panicked three in the morning phone call, shambling up to the ritziest areas of Kirkwall. The shattered glass from the broken window, the light from the silent alarm still blinking steadily. The first Hawke sister, bruised and shaken but otherwise unharmed, the second smelling of smoke and charred dwarf while an elf calmly stitched up his own wound. 

Following the Carta to, of all places, an ancient temple hidden in the Vinmarks. A temple that locked them inside and forced them into the Deep Roads before they could escape. Their desperate fight through the things of nightmares, and Hawke’s blood being the only thing that could open the door. 

It unlocked more than that. Much more.

And in spite of herself, as he spun the tale, she ended up closing that distance between their bodies. She wasn’t sure exactly how it happened, it seemed to be a magic of it’s own, magnetism or perhaps gravity. She didn’t press against him, not like she desperately wanted to, but she couldn’t ignore the soft heat leaching from him to her. 

Couldn’t ignore the way his voice lulled her back to sleep. 

“I swear.” Varric murmured softly into her hair. “We killed him, Princess.” 

No they didn’t. But she was too tired to argue. 

“I’m sorry.” She thought he whispered. But it could have been a dream, one she slipped back into effortlessly. 

The next time she woke up, it was to bitter shouts. There was a weight at the end of the cot, but nobody under the blankets beside her. She was completely, utterly, alone. Clearly, she’d hallucinated Varric Tethras’s gentle arms curling around her, his searing warmth, his muscles and…

She raised her hand to her head, rubbing her face briskly. 

“Ria?” Bea’s voice asked cautiously, breathless with hope. 

“Bea.” She answered groggily, opening her eyes. It wasn’t Bea’s face she met with, but the lined and weary one of Mother Gisele. She swallowed, swinging her eyes down to the bottom of the cot where Bea sat, still as a statue, looking more a mess than she’d ever seen her. Eyeliner smudged, hair askew, lips pale. 

“Are you awake this time?” Bea asked, frozen in place. “Really awake? Varric said you were before but you were out of it still and…” 

“Varric?” Her tongue nearly tripped on the word, a surge of heat rising up her face. “He was here?” 

“They all were.” Gisele soothed. “You are dear to many people, Herald. You’ve had a steady stream of them wishing you well.” 

“What would you have me tell them?!” Cullen’s voice roared. Maria fought back the flinch and pushed herself up, trying to stare into the darkness past Bea. 

“We must find a way!” Cassandra snapped back, a pale figure in the dim firelight. 

“Please!” Jospehine cried out. “We must use reason!”

“Don’t mind them.” Bea dismissed the humans with a wave over her shoulder. “They’ve been at it for hours. How are you feeling? How’s your head? Still remarkably thick?” 

“Shut up.” Maria replied automatically, the banter familiar even as her throat scratched out the words like she hadn’t spoken in ages. “Where are my clothes?” 

“Ruined.” Bea supplied unhelpfully. “But Harding said she had a spare outfit of her own in her camera bag. It’s probably the closest we’ll get to anything fitting you. Hold on, I’ll go find them.” 

As if she’d simply been waiting for something, anything, to do, Bea jumped into motion. She fled into the darkness before Maria had time to ask where exactly her little sister had gotten the coat she was wearing. The thick, buttery leather was far more familiar than Maria wanted to admit. 

“You need to rest.” Giselle said gently. “There is no need to get up quite yet. After all…”

Giselle tipped her head almost playfully to the heated argument happening just outside between Cassandra, Josephine, Leliana, and Cullen. “It does not appear we’re going anywhere quickly.” 

“We have time to waste?” Maria asked, pushing herself impatiently into a fully seated position despite Gisele’s tutting disapproval. She clutched the blankets tightly around her shoulders and breathed through the ache in her muscles. Bad, yes, but not the worst she’d ever pushed through.  

“Thanks to you, they have the luxury of arguing. You prevented our enemies from following, but with time to doubt… well, it is easy to blame.” 

Bea reappeared, tossing a bundle of clothes on the cot. “Right. So, I’m gonna warn you that you look like a bannana someone’s kicked around, that’s how fucking bruised up you are.” 

“I’m sure I’ve looked worse.” Maria muttered, dropping the blanket and reaching for the sweater. Even in the flickering lantern light, she could see the marks covering her pale flesh. Deep bits of purple and blue, shadows deepening them into black in places. 

“I’m not.” Bea admitted, folding her arms around herself and watching Maria as she struggled to manage the fabric with her stiff limbs. Finally, impatiently, Bea stepped forward and grabbed it, thrusting it over Maria’s head. “Here, before you strangle yourself.” 

“We don’t have that!” Cullen yelled. 

“She is not saying we do!” Leliana snarled back. 

“In-fighting may be as great a danger to us as Corypheus.” Giselle sighed. 

“I don’t know.” Bea sniped under her breath while she gently tugged the sweater over Maria’s battered torso, taking extra care to straighten it and meeting her eyes with a weak grin. “To my knowledge, our humans have zero dragons and the demon has one.” 

“Where is it?” Panic clawed at Maria’s throat again. “The dragon and Corypheus, the red templars, where…” 

“Nobody has figured out where the fuck we are.” Bea answered. “Varric can’t get his network up and running for more than ten minutes at a time, although to be fair he’s been snuggling you and trying to work for most of the night. For as good as he claims to be at multitasking…” 

There was his name again. And her chance to ask. She plucked the material over Bea’s shoulders pointedly. “What’s this?” 

“It’s mine now.” Bea declared, wicked eyes dancing with relief and mirth. “Jealous, Ria?” 

Gisele cut in with practiced diplomacy. “There has been no sign of Corypheus, his dragon, or the templars. Perhaps he believes you are dead, and thus is satisfied. Or he believes we are helpless and lost.” 

Gisele sighed. “It could even be that he plans another attack as we speak. We do not know the demon’s mind, only our own fears.” 

Maria swung her feet off the cot and pulled the leggings on over her aching limbs as quickly as she could. Jumping from the cot to finish the job was a mistake, the rush of blood to her head making her stumble into Bea. Her sister’s arm wrapped around her waist. “Easy.” Bea whispered. “This was… this was bad, Ria. You really should lay back down.” 

“I’m not gonna sodding sit here and listen to them arguing.” Maria spat between her gritted teeth, fighting the dizziness back where it came from and finishing the job of putting her damn pants on. “This isn’t helping anything.” 

“Another heated voice won’t help.” Gisele advised, a gentle voice laced with steel. “Even yours. Perhaps especially yours.” 

“I agree. The last thing we need is one of your infamous tantrums, Ria.”

She was going to kill Bea. She glared into her sister’s face, holding onto her and pulling on one of her soggy boots, the only clothing left from her misadventure, it seemed. Gisele picked up where Bea left off. “They are struggling to lead because of what we survivors witnessed.” 

“Well, it can’t be worse than what I saw.” Maria snapped, pulling on the last boot. 

“Don’t you dare.” Bea shoved Maria, hard, back onto the cot. Caught off guard, Maria stumbled back onto the thing. It creaked precariously, but before she could turn her temper on Bea, Maria realized her sister’s face was flushed and splotchy, tears threatening in her eyes. “Don’t you dare.” Bea hissed, diving into Varric’s coat pocket and pulling out something glimmering, shining in the dull light. Instead of handing it to her, Bea threw it. The necklace and her rings landed in Maria’s lap. 

Maria blocked out the human’s arguing and focused on Bea, preparing to argue with her instead. She opened her mouth, but Bea stopped her cold. “I saw you die, Ria. I thought I buried you just like I buried Nanna, Dad, and Fynn.”

The well of grief under those two sentences stretched endlessly. Bea ripped her eyes away from Maria’s and stared up at the tarp above them, blinking rapidly. Guilt thudded hollowly in Maria’s chest and she curled her fist around the necklace. 

“Bea…” 

“Shut up.” Bea seethed. “Shut up. I thought I lost you, I thought… fuck.”

Bea whirled away and Maria stood, intent on following her. “I need a fucking minute.” Bea shouted back, voice thick with unshed tears. “Stay fucking put for once in your damn life and give me a second to breathe.” 

Wretched, Maria watched Bea stumble back out into the night. Gisele sighed, watching the slender form vanish. “It is difficult. For all of us, although for her I fear it was far worse. We left our defender behind to save us all… and we lost her.” 

Maria hadn’t been defending anyone. She’d just been trying to survive, blindly acting on gut and instinct. It had been a desperate last stand, nothing more, nothing heroic or courageous. “I wasn’t…” 

Gisele overrode her voice patiently. “And after all hope had fled… she returns. This is miraculous by any standard, and your actions appear more divine intervention than standard heroics. The longer we examine the darkness behind us, the more our trials seem ordained.” 

“That’s crazy.” Maria folded her arms around her aching torso, trying not to shiver. “Nothing about this has anything to do with faith or…” 

“It does seem insane, yes?” Gisele asked sweetly, piercing Maria with her dark eyes. “What ‘we’ have been called to ensure? What ‘we’, perhaps, must come to believe?” 

That ‘we’ of Gisele’s was very pointed and Maria wanted nothing to do with it. She didn’t believe in their Maker, their Andraste, their Herald. Maria never heard the Stone sing or heard whispered guidance from her Ancestors' tombs. The Elven creators apparently abandoned the world long ago, and Maria wouldn’t be surprised if everyone else hadn’t followed suit. They were alone, carving out their destinies with nothing but switchblades and shaking fingers. 

“What ‘we’ believe doesn’t matter.” Maria glared, standing from the cot and steadying herself for just a moment. “What we’re about to do is freeze to death if someone can’t get their head out of their ass. I’m not waiting for the Maker to intervene.” 

She turned her back on the infuriating woman and took careful, measured steps to the edge of the tent. Outside her meager shelter, she saw the Inquisition’s leaders surrounding a campfire, all wearing various expressions of distress, their silence simmering with resentment. 

Fuck. Fuck. What the fuck were they supposed to… 

“Shadows fall…” Gisele’s throaty voice carried from somewhere behind her, loud and clear as a chantry bell on Sunday as she moved to stand beside Maria. “And hope has fled. Steel your heart, the dawn will come…” 

“What are you doing?” Maria hissed under her breath, piercing Gisele with a reproving glare, flinching as the four humans turned to stare. Gisele smiled, mysterious and sly, sailing past Maria without a word of explanation. She continued to sing an old song, a song Maria swore she’d heard in bits and pieces, a Chantry hymn floating out of pretty wooden chapels in Ostwick. “The night is long, and the path is dark… Look to the sky, for one day soon… the dawn will come.” 

Maria gambled semi-professionally and knew she was rather good at it. Still, she’d have never placed money on what happened next in a million years.

It started with Leliana’s clear, bright soprano joining the chorus. Then, Maker’s balls, Cullen. Soldiers. Refugees. Chantry sisters. Children and witches and templars, all of them. The sound roared louder than the ocean, enough to drown the dragon’s screech still echoing in her head, and they were staring at her like she had an answer, like she could do something, anything.

Some of them dropped to their knees like she really was an idol carved of stone, an altar to worship at. Her panicked thoughts insisted she should have fled after Bea, but when she looked behind her to see if that escape route was still open, she saw her sister had returned in silence. The slouched form in the darkness, arms crossed, looked torn between amusement and grave concern. 

She could almost hear Bea scoffing about humans being outrageous. Maria tightened her grip helplessly on the rings in her fist, wishing for all the world she was somewhere else. Anywhere else. 

The song ended, the night sky hanging onto the last piercing note. Gisele turned her dark eyes back down towards Maria, triumph sparking in them as people cheered. “An army needs more than an enemy.” She declared softly. “It needs a cause.” 

Gisele lifted her hands, prepared to preach a sermon to the masses. “My fellow children of the Maker…” She began fervently. “We have survived the trials put in front of us, endured the terror of…” 

She stared, agog, until she felt the light press of a hand against the small of her back. She looked up to pin Solas with her bewildered gaze.

“A word?” He asked politely.

“Only if it has four letters.” She protested weakly, staring back out in stunned disbelief at the crowd.

“Come.” Solas said gently, guiding her into the shadows. “We have much to discuss.”

--

“She’s a wise woman. Worth heeding, at the very least. Her kind understand the moments that unify a cause… or fracture it.” Solas muttered, almost to himself, although Maria understood he was attempting to instruct her.

Maria shivered, although if it was from the cold or existential dread, she couldn’t tell. Solas noticed and extended his palm. A smooth, elegant flick of his wrist summoned a ball of flames, blue and beautiful, in the space between them. Maria stepped closer to the warmth, grateful for it. 

“Can you help me escape her?” Maria asked, only semi-joking. Solas’s fond smile was the only answer before he shook his head.

“The magic Corypheus used against you. The spell that embedded that mark in your hand… It is Elven.” 

Maria lifted her right palm up, still clutching the rings within it. She unfolded her fingers and stared down at the intricate, beautiful sun burned into it. “It looks Elven, I guess.” She muttered, shifting the sparkling rings to reveal the elegant loops. “Not that I’m an expert.” 

“It is the magic that has been inside you since the start, pulled to the surface.” Solas explained clinically. “I assume it is also the magic that created the vortex, the same spell that caused the explosion that destroyed the conclave.” 

And now… now it was inside her. “Fantastic.” She muttered. 

“Do not begrudge it so much.” Solas advised. “I suspect without that magic in your veins, you would have perished then as well. As to how Corypheus survived… that is a mystery.”

Solas sighed and hunched his shoulders, staring down at the snow consideringly. “The only thing that is not a mystery is how people will react when they discover the origin of this magic. Perhaps people will not look past the fact that it is the symbol of the chantry, but there must have been a tool, one he used to harness it, and if it is found…”

“Riots.” Maria sighed. “The elves have it shit enough in all the cities of Thedas.” 

Nanna used to say it could always be worse when they complained about not having enough money to buy nice clothes or go to the movies. They, at least, could afford food and their bills even if they had to work to the bone to do it. The elves… well, there was a reason they were shoved into the alienage projects. Nobody wanted to look at starving children. 

“This is a fucking mess and elves are an easy target.” Maria murmured.

“I agree.” Solas’s voice was laced with approval. He placed a gentle hand on her aching shoulder. “But we can control this narrative. We can tell the story we wish to tell.” 

“Solas.” Maria jerked her chin over her shoulder. “There’s a woman back there preaching a sermon about a dwarven criminal with elven magic in her hand at the head of a human religious movement. I can’t control any of my own story.” 

She hadn’t been able to in years. 

“Corypheus attacking the Inquisition changed it. Changed you.” Solas insisted. Maria shivered again, but this time it certainly wasn’t from the cold. “You are their guide. You are their savior.” 

“I’m not.” Maria protested, wrenching away. “I’m not, don’t you dare go human on me, Solas, or I swear…” 

“There is a place in the North. I have seen it in the fade, a place hidden by magic that waits for a force to hold it…” 

“Is there anything useful in the fade?” Maria asked skeptically. “Maybe a way to get the network up and running so we can call for help?” 

“Varric Tethras will never get our communications up and running without additional technology.” Solas insisted smoothly. “The witches alone, our power, interfered too much. Perhaps, if we had not found you he could have rigged something together, but the stronger you become, the more you recover…” 

Solas reached for her palm, covered it with his own. “The technology we have with us cannot override your magic. Not any longer. I suspect he is beginning to identify the problem as well. If anyone could fix it, I suspect it is Varric, but he cannot do so here.” 

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Maria blurted out. It would have been better, apparently, if she froze to death or simply died in the avalanche. 

“But your magic is, perhaps, the only key to finding our path. Go north, lead them forward. Your magic can unlock our safety, I know it.” Solas pressed. “Only you can do this.” 

“I can’t.” Maria’s voice broke and she shook her head. “Solas, I can’t.” 

“You must.” Solas’s lips pressed into a thin line. “But you will not do it alone. We are by your side.” 

“They won’t listen to me.” 

“On the contrary.” Solas smiled, soft and proud. “I believe you are the only one they will listen to.” 

xx

Three days. They followed Maria through the mountains for three fucking days. Varric thought he’d never forgive her for their forced march through miles of snow, directly into the bitter, biting wind of the north. There was, after all, only so much a man would do for a pair of beguiling eyes no matter how sensuous her curves. Varric Tethras had nearly reached his damn limit. 

In fact, he’d had it with Maker damned everything. The network that wouldn’t connect them to the satellite, no matter what he tried. He couldn’t feel his toes. And he was simply sick of the endless, bleak, whiteness of it all. 

One more day, he thought darkly, trudging after Maria’s crimson hair. One more blighted day, then he was refusing to go one more step. 

Which, of course, was exactly what he’d said to himself yesterday. 

“Can you all honestly not feel that?” Maria asked over her shoulder, perplexed.

“There are lots of things I can’t feel, Princess.” Varric growled. “Would you like an enumerated list?” 

She sent him a withering look. Varric glared back, unimpressed. 

“Darling, all I can feel is that energy coming out of your hand. It’s like standing in the middle of an orchestra.” Vivienne, somehow, still looked elegant in her snug fitted peacoat. The splashes of red templar blood almost formed a chic pattern. She’d be a perfect villain for one of his stories. If he didn’t freeze to death first. 

Maria cautiously approached a cliff. Varric watched, warily, as she danced rather too close to the edge for his taste. If she fell to her death one more time, he wasn’t rescuing her, right hand to Andraste. 

“Please do not fall off that precipice.” Dorian snapped, in tune with his thoughts. “I, for one, do not wish to be the person informing Cullen we allowed you to plummet to your doom.” 

Maria ignored him, reaching out to brush snow from a large stone pillar overlooking the abyss. A matching one, almost like they were man made instead of natural, sat some distance away. Her ineffective swiping revealed something carved into the surface.

“Runes.” Solas smiled down at her, proud as only an old teacher could be. “Well done.” 

But Maria seemed to be entranced by the shapes in the rock. She tipped her head to the side, examining them curiously. She brought her gloved right hand to her mouth and used her teeth to rip off the fleece fabric. Varric caught the slightest flicker of light in her palm before she pressed it to the stone. 

The runes lit up gold, glowing gently, flickering with power. A gust of wind surged past them all, so fierce he temporarily grew concerned it would topple Maria right into the yawning abyss. Instead, it lifted her hair around her face, whipped past them into the chasm, bright lights dancing within it. 

Varric’s breath caught in his throat. The lights seemed to sketch out a bridge, one that turned corporeal before their very eyes. It was made of stone and marble, hanging above the abyss implausibly. The magic picked up speed, circling in clouds in the air, puffs of glitter exploding to reveal walls, towers, trees, gates, all pulled from nothing but thin air. 

“Andraste’s blushing buttcheeks.” Dorian whispered. “Who hid this?”

Who wouldn’t? It was something from another age, from a fairy tale, a fortress fit for a queen, pristine and intact, waiting for someone to unveil it, someone to call it back to life. 

Not a queen, a part of him supplied. A princess. His princess. 

“Skyhold.”  Solas supplied quietly. “Welcome home, Herald.”

[argylemikewheeler]

Heyheyheyhey steve watching the stars, or going for long walks late into the night, not really caring what could be out there. Steve unable to swim in his pool after knowing what happened there, who died. Steve's parents asking him why he always seems tired. Steve taking up track to drive his mind away from monsters and deaths and blood, oh so much blood. Steve being closed off, everyone at school wondering where King Steve is, the fuckboy that everyone loved. Steve wonders too.

okay so i could write about one hundred pages on this, but here’s a little 2.2k word vomit. i loved this omg thank u anon

Steve wasn’t a bad son. He and his parents worked around each other, participating in a symbiotic performance of the Perfect Family. Steve got what he needed to succeed as much as he could in school and for his mom and dad to experience the joys of parenthood. They were caring and loving, but not active. Steve slipped through their fingers the winter of 1984 and they didn’t so much as watch.

Sleeping was like waiting for a rising tide. Lying in bed, Steve could feel the licks of unknown darkness across his ankles, soon swelling and washing over his legs. It’d cross his hips and he’d roll over, hoping the bright light of his back porch would pour through his sheer curtains and ground him. But staring at his pool lights only amplified the hushed screams folded into every lap of water. The water and Barb’s screams would climb farther, crashing over Steve’s chest. The water chased after his rapid breath, filling his lungs. He’d be paralyzed, the water still flowing faster faster and filling Steve up until it could only escape down his cheeks.

He woke up most nights screaming. His sheets tangled around his ankles, haunting vines unable to leave him alone, and his fear retreating back to the contained water of the pool. His parents were another floor away, knocked out on two glasses of wine and antihistamines. They were done soothing nightmares when Steve got out of diapers. He had to raise himself.

Steve’s first attempt was track. It was consistent and required no brain power. It drained him and made any sleep stem from exhaustion and not choice. The Party could come to practice or meets and he could keep an eye on them– while also turning a blind eye to his own condition. He was still having nightmares, even in the daytime, and running helped. It wasn’t enough– not even the thought that Steve wasn’t running from anything this time– but it was a normalcy. It helped.

–

“Steve, baby, why are you up so early?” His mom stepped into the dim kitchen light still tying her robe. Steve was standing at the counter trying to figure out how to make oatmeal taste as good as Nancy’s. He was in his fifth morning of experimentation and it was the first anyone noticed.

“I’ve been up since seven.” Four, actually.

“Oh, baby, you should be getting more sleep. You look worn out.” She reached for the coffee maker first, then Steve’s face. Her thumb ran over his cheekbone, now easily spotted and traced.

“It’s just the running, Mom.” Steve shrugged. “I’m just losing weight in my face.”

“Are you sure?” She was asking only because it was law that parents weren’t supposed to accept their children’s lies, even if they didn’t care. “You can talk to me.” Steve couldn’t.

“Yeah. It’s just this new training. Haven’t gotten my diet quite right.” Steve waved out to the bowls of oatmeal and loose oats spilled onto the counter by unsteady hands. The oatmeal was Steve’s last hope; an ingestion of comfort. Nancy had made it for him one last time before school before everything fell back into shambles. He was still moving an oat out from between his teeth when he crumbled up his college essay. “I’ll get it, Mom. I’m fine.”

“Okay, Stevie, baby.” She accepted the lie with the confidence it had been the truth. “Have a good day at school. And tell those boys I said hello.”

“They aren’t all boys, Mom.” Steve felt the futile need to argue El and Max’s presence. She wasn’t parenting them, she didn’t need to ignore them. “And I have babysitting after track at Will’s house.”

“Okay.” She was reaching for a mug and clanged the ceramic to hush out Steve’s words.

Steve took his oatmeal and left. He ate his breakfast in the car and drove to Dustin’s neighborhood. He was early but had no issue waiting. Time escaped Steve normally, his vision coming in and out as the world grew black, his skin feeling a chill that escaped everyone else. In those moments, when Steve was drowning again, time ticked outside his grasp. He’d blink back, sweating and weeping, to a time he didn’t remember leaving.

Luckily, Dustin came knocking on Steve’s window just as his dashboard became invaded by thick, black vines. Dustin was always pleasant on the ride to school. He had every reason to be disgruntled; he was fourteen and was on his way to middle school at eight in the morning. He had better perspective than Steve. Claudia always made sure of that.

“You good, Steve?” Dustin asked after a while. Steve hadn’t really noticed the silence until he stopped listening to his own thoughts. “You look like shit.”

“I’m trying a new hair product.” Lying was easier on four hours of sleep. “First day makes your hair look… deflated. Then it gets the volume.”

“Alright…” Dustin was skeptical. “I’ll be tracking the progress. The hair is a trade secret.” He laughed and Steve coughed along. His laughter had become waterlogged from his late nights lying awake. There was nothing left in Steve Harrington to offer. It had been cried, vomited, and screamed out. There was no laughter.

Dustin was a good enough child and friend to leave Steve’s car without another question. He wished Steve a good day and hopped out of the car, rushing to the front door with promise at his heels. Steve drove the three miles to the high school and parked at the far end of the parking lot. The oatmeal bowl on the top of his dash had hardened by then. It all had.

He’d have to soak the bowl when he got home. His mother would be mad. He’d apologize but it would slip out insincere and distant. He’d go to his room. He’d lay down. He’d wish he had been swallowed up by split, petaled lips of a monster pacing Steve’s thoughts.

“Steve?” Nancy was at his window with Jonathan beside her and both looking at him with furrowed eyebrows. “Come on, the first bell rang.”

“You can’t skip history again.” Jonathan added. “I can’t keep catching you up on notes, Steve.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.” Steve muttered. The door was still closed and Nancy and Jonathan were speaking loudly through the glass, but their message got through clearly. “I’m going. I’m going.”

“Hey!” She grabbed his arm. “Is everything okay, Steve? You look…” Nancy paused to choose her words delicately. “Unlike yourself.” It was nice of her to insinuate that, on a normal day, Steve looked well-rested and adjusted. Steve hadn’t felt that way long enough to forget how to fake it.

“New hair product.”

“That must be it.” Jonathan stood on the other side of Steve. They bracketed Steve’s vision with pointed looks at one another. Nancy tried to talk with only her eyes while Jonathan was trying to do the same with his hands.

“I know, it’s looking really bad recently.” Steve continued. “I promise, it’s fine.”

“We weren’t asking about your hair.” Nancy said, her tone toed a scold. “We were asking about you, Steve.”

“Same thing, isn’t it.” He muttered, reaching for the front doors.

“Steve…”

“Sorry, can’t be late again.” Steve said, walking off. “You’re off the hook for review, Byers. See you later.”

—

Steve didn’t remember gym class, which was entirely the point. Running around the track and playing point-less pickup games of basketball kept Steve separate from his own thoughts and just barely connected to his body. In gym, he was mostly motions. No one spoke to Steve in a way that required a response. He drifted from sideline to court. The gym remained a gym the entire hour; not a single vine tripped him playing. That was mostly himself or Billy on opposing defense.

After class, Steve was trying to wake himself up in the showers. The water was hot and felt thick against Steve’s numb skin. There were a few other students, some still discussing the game, others recounting the weekend. Steve scrubbed his face with his open hands.

“Shitty game, Harrington.” Billy said beside him. He had been across the showers, but had moved closer to Steve, if only to heckle.

“Thanks.” Steve said, trying to let the water prod harsh enough to force a smile. “I don’t really care.”

“I just thought King Steve would have more invested in his own reputation.” Billy laughed. “Guess you’re letting the kingdom run you out, huh?”

“Whatever, man.” Steve muttered. There was more on Steve’s mind than the popularity of his actions. They might have been running him out of his place of status, but Steve had spent more time genuinely running for his life. “Fuck off.”

Billy scoffed but the water beside Steve continued to run. Steve hadn’t opened his eyes and wanted to cherish the moment he had in the familiar and unchanging dark. It was simple nothingness, the water beating against Steve’s face and streaming down his chin and chest. The warmth stirred feelings of humanity, of intimacy and closeness. Of the rapid thump thump thump of Dustin’s heartbeat against Steve’s hand as he hoisted him off the squelching, trembling ground. The fear of being torn apart just below the surface of Hawkins and being smeared along a pumpkin patch as their own lasting impression–

Steve’s eyes shot open as the darkness began to root itself in his nightmares. To his horror, the pooling water had turned to blood. Thick, warm, human blood. The water on Steve’s hands, around his feet, running down his chest was a dark maroon. He clenched his eyes closed again, his breaths whistling between his teeth as he began panting. The water was too warm now, it was overheating him. The kill was recent, maybe able to save–

“No no. No. Come on. Don’t.” Steve muttered, opening his eyes and trying to force himself to see the regular yellow tile. The blood was now smearing the shower faucet and soap bar. “Oh god. No no.”

“Yeah, if I saw what you did when I looked down, I’d be upset too.” Billy chuckled, noticing Steve’s slow tremors but connecting minimal dots to even begin intervening. His face was covered blood too. Steve’s haunting memory started with a slow drip from Billy’s nose, where Steve had once landed a punch, and slowly spreading over his entire face. He grinned through it, Billy unable to see through Steve’s nightmarish lens.

“No no. It’s not real. Come on, Steve.” He muttered to himself. He said his own name, reminding his body that there was a person inside; the world his brain was living needed to match the one his body was stuck in. He wasn’t in the tunnels anymore. “There’s no blood.”

“Excuse me.” Billy said, still listening. “Harrington, what are you talking about?”

“Please, just please shut up.” Steve begged, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. The water stung and felt thick in his eyes. Steve tried to wipe his eyes but felt the water smear across his face like steaming, burning war paint. “Leave me the fuck alone. Now.”

“Fine.” The water beside him stopped and feet slapped against the wet floor hurriedly. “At least, like, have a fucking towel, man.” Billy yanked Steve by the shoulder and counteracted the gesture. In actuality though, a teenager nearly vomiting, completely naked in the school showers must have been completely embarrassing for everyone involved. Billy wasn’t only helping Steve, if that was the correct word.

Steve took the towel being shoved on him. He stepped out of the shower’s static-feeling rush of water and feebly wrapped the towel around his waist. Steve still had his eyes closed. Opening them meant either reentering his nightmare or being brought to the brink of embarrassment in the boys’ locker room.

Finally, he allowed his eyes to open– and he was still standing in the showers. Warm water streamed at Steve’s face and he was dripping head to toe in clear, lukewarm water. There were wide eyes, quiet muttering, and quiet snickering.

Steve had a fight and flight response to the gut feeling of danger. They thought it was amusing, but Steve was the one with the first-hand experience chasing monsters with a prayer for his life and a pair of fucking swimming goggles. Steve was the one who slept with a nailed baseball bat under his bed every night, but they assumed it was all crushed beer cans and used socks.

“That ashamed over a game?” Someone chuckled, spinning their towel up. “All you got when you don’t got college, right?” They released an end and snapped the towel. Steve had to act like the sound didn’t make him jump.

He was mortified and exhausted and wondering how many nights did he have to wait until he’d truly never wake up.

The locker room erupted into laughter, Steve included. It was just another motion. Truthfully, he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole. He genuinely knew it had the ability to do so and devour him, and every last choking breath.

Sometimes, Steve figured it’d be easy to die; just like life had been before.

ao3

[lycanthroptea]

a revolution

or, the beginning.

                          “By the side of Enjolras, who represented the logic of the Revolution,                Combeferre represented its philosophy. Between the logic of the Revolution                and its philosophy there exists this difference—that its logic may end in war,                whereas its philosophy can end only in peace...    Combeferre preferred the                whiteness of the beautiful to the blaze of the sublime.”

                                     --Les Misérables, Book IV, Chapter I

    It had started with an invitation. It had started with four friends. It had started with hope, which sparked a flame, which burned rich and brilliant and strong. It flared, scorched, and blackened, leaving a graveyard in its wake.

     Decembers in Paris were rather unpleasant affairs. Iron winds rushed through narrow city streets, accompanied by bitter cold and the sting of snow, the sort of ice that numbed and burned fingers until they blistered from frost. It was no surprise, then, that the majority of the city’s inhabitants had sought refuge indoors, save for the unlucky few.

     One particularly miserable boy winced as a viciously icy gust threatened to greedily steal away his thin scarf, which he pulled even more tightly around his reddened nose. He had just spent the last ten minutes rushing through quiet alleyways, not because he was late, but because his threadbare coat provided little protection from the elements. Winter really was an unforgiving mistress.

     As the boy rounded a shadowy corner, his pinched features visibly relaxed at the sight of an unassuming cafe half a block down the snow-covered street. It was unadorned with the exception of a weather-worn sign, which creaked precariously like a pendulum in the capricious wind. Though its colors had dulled over the years, one could still make out a beautiful golden bird flying towards the sun in the peeling paint, the inscription Le Café Phénix penned gracefully underneath.

     “Remus!”

     He halted, glancing over his shoulder at the echoing voice. It belonged to a raven-haired boy around the same age as him, dressed in a warm tailored coat and a thick, red scarf, hair pulled back by an elegant ribbon. He swung his arm around Remus’s shoulder in a friendly manner, lips splitting into a winning, roguish smile.

     “Nasty weather, isn’t it?” he asked cheerily, pulling open the cafe door for the both of them. They crossed the room with a brief hello to the owner before jogging up the rickety back staircase. “And to think James still wants us to show up despite the fact that half of us’ll be frozen before we even get here.”

     Remus pushed open the door at the top of the steps, the warm thrum of friendly chatter immediately spilling on to their ears. “That’s not a problem for you, Sirius. You’ve got enough layers on to clothe five people.”

     “Now, mon ami,” Sirius admonished, smirking, “let’s not get bogged down on the details.”

     Sometimes, when he was alone in his flat, Remus would think of his family.

     His mother, a prostitute. His father, an ex-convict. He himself, the product of one of the worst crimes of humanity.

     James and Sirius and Peter didn’t seem to mind, but he wondered what the others would say if they knew. He wondered, and contemplated, and pondered. At times, quiet reflection was the only way to deal with the burden of guilt resting on his shoulders. If he hadn’t been born, perhaps his mother would have been in a better place. He was nothing but an extra mouth to feed, a burden on society who had barely survived.

          ( His mother had not. )

     They were dreamers, eyes looking towards the sky and waiting for the pale light of dawn. They were hope personified: James, the Chief, on the cusp of manhood, righteous ichor blazing in his veins and authority imprinted on his brow; Sirius, the Center, radiant and warm, the ability to inspire in his fingertips; Peter, the Support, a solid rock on which to stand, always present to lend the solidarity of a friend; Remus, the Guide, a mind lost in the stars, words painting an image vivid enough to taste, philosophy made sweet as honey and sustenance enough for a week without food.

     They were the revolution, and they would rise to free the people. The shackles of injustice would be thrown off and France would become a shining democracy. They would be at the forefront of it all, not for the sake of credit or fame, but for their duty to the motherland, to Patria, to humanity itself. It was for this that they assembled their Order, where minds would gather to architect the future, where thirty people wished for a better tomorrow, where they worked together to alleviate the burden of the suffering.

     And yet they were barely twenty. James and Sirius studied at the university, aspiring lawyers whose quick wit was both admired and admonished by their peers. Peter kept up his family business, and Remus continued his work assisting the Franciscan order with ministry to the poor. They explored, they had adventures in the streets of Paris and ran into mischief. They teased and gawked when James fell in love, and snickered when the object of his affections firmly spurned him. They laughed and loved and lived, the morning light threading through their hair and pure starlight shining in their eyes. They were boys.

     “We fight,” Remus said quietly, “for the dawn. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

     Lungs burned, hearts aflame with passion, a hundred footsteps flew down the streets in an echo of hope. Lamarque was gone, and the people had rioted. The people were ready. The general’s coffin was borne through a throng of Parisians screaming for justice as their last voice in Parliament had died, and grief had borne outrage, which burgeoned into action. Now was the time to seize the day and take back what rightfully belonged to the people, and they had risen up in the streets of Paris. The members of the Order flooded Le Phénix, pulling chairs and tables and cabinets on to the cobblestones.

     “Can you believe it?” Remus asked, exhilarated. “I can taste the dawn already.”

     The response by his friend went unheard, drowned out by the clatter of furniture tossed onto the growing barricade. Peter paused, looking towards the rest of his friends. He frowned. “If we can make it that far.”

     They asked for assistance, they called upon the people to rise.

     They were met with silence.

     The blood of the martyrs would water the meadows of France.

     The barricade was hushed, save for the quiet flick of a match as James lit himself a cigar. Smoke spiraled up in a lazy waltz, reaching for the velvet sky on a warm, hazy June night, the sound of a violin playing a mournful love song far in the distance. A light breeze carded her sweet fingers through Remus’s hair.

     His ears still rang with the deafening thunder of gunfire.

     His hands were still red.

     He’d tried desperately to staunch the gun wound, but there was blood, so, so much blood. Marlene gasped, begged, wept, and Remus was confronted with the pain of utter helplessness, the face of a woman reduced to a shell, a woman afraid to die. He’d smiled, bittersweet, eyes brimming with unshed tears. He hadn’t been able to save her.

     ( He hadn’t been able to save his mother either. )

     It was an emptiness that threatened to choke, a nightmare become reality as he realized with a growing horror that she wouldn’t be the last. He leant back against the rough surface of a table, eyes flickering up towards the sky. More so than the decadently paneled ceilings of Versailles, nature held a certain stark brilliance. She was arrayed in a swathe of stars, glittering and proud. The constellations would watch the bloody conflagration, impartial, eyes cold to the strife of men and the winding of time as men lived and loved and died underneath them.

     A wistful smile twisted his lips. Death, he supposed, would be more bearable under such a beautiful canvas.

          My friends, my friends forgive me           That I live and you are gone.           There's a grief that can't be spoken.           There's a pain goes on and on.

          Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me           What your sacrifice was for.           Empty chairs at empty tables           Where my friends will sing no more.

     Pale sunlight slanted through the broken window, illuminating shards of crystalline glass that glittered like diamonds. It was a moment frozen in time, dust dancing gently as to not disturb the man standing in the middle of the room, leaning heavily on a crutch. He was a man, not because he’d grown in stature and age, but because he had seen far more than any boy should. His brow was lined with grief; his eyes were stained with red, a flood that drowned out any last vestiges of innocence left in his mind. He had seen Death. 

     ( He wished he hadn’t lived to tell the tale. )

     The man blinked, inhaling shakily. His knuckles whitened as he gripped his crutch tighter, seemingly clinging to the only stable thing left in his world. The sunlight continued to shine through the window; the sound of a child laughing fluttered from some distance street, a sweet song of naïveté. The man looked around the room as if it’d divulge answers.

     A sob broke the quiet, and as the man’s shoulders trembled violently the walls refused any response.

     Lily, dead, shot in the side. James, dead, stabbed by a bayonet protecting her. Peter, dead, lost in the rubble of a collapsing barricade. Sirius, a traitor, shipped off to the chain gang at Toulon.

     Remus, alone.

     At times, he wished he could have died with them.

     Fate had other plans.

          For the wretched of the earth           There is a flame that never dies;           Even the darkest night will end           And the sun will rise.

[readbookywooks]

There was a warming pan on the flagstones by the fire. Would it make a weapon? There was a faint metallic sound. Perhaps screaming wouldn't be such a bad idea after all. . . . The window imploded. For an instant Keli saw, framed against a hell of blue and purple flames, a hooded figure crouched on the back of the largest horse she had ever seen. There was someone standing by the bed, with a knife half raised. In slow motion, she watched fascinated as the arm went up and the horse galloped at glacier speed across the floor. Now the knife was above her, starting its descent, and the horse was rearing and the rider was standing in the stirrups and swinging some sort of weapon and its blade tore through the slow air with a noise like a finger on the rim of a wet glass — The light vanished. There was a soft thump on the floor, followed by a metallic clatter. Keli took a deep breath. A hand was briefly laid across her mouth and a worried voice said, 'If you scream, I'll regret it. Please? I'm in enough trouble as it is.' Anyone who could get that amount of bewildered pleading into their voice was either genuine or such a good actor they wouldn't have to bother with assassination for a living. She said, 'Who are you?' 'I don't know if I'm allowed to tell you,' said the voice. 'You are still alive, aren't you?' She bit down the sarcastic reply just in time. Something about the tone of the question worried her. 'Can't you tell?' she said. 'It's not easy. . . .' There was a pause. She strained to see in the darkness, to put a face around that voice. 'I may have done you some terrible harm,'it added. 'Haven't you just saved my life?' 'I don't know what I have saved, actually. Is there some light around here?' The maid sometimes leaves matches on the mantelpiece,' said Keli. She felt the presence beside her move away. There were a few hesitant footsteps, a couple of thumps, and finally a clang, although the word isn't sufficient to describe the real ripe cacophony of falling metal that filled the room. It was even followed by the traditional little tinkle a couple of seconds after you thought it was all over. The voice said, rather indistinctly, 'I'm under a suit of armour. Where should I be?' Keli slid quietly out of bed, felt her way towards the fireplace, located the bundle of matches by the faint light from the dying fire, struck one in a burst of sulphurous smoke, lit a candle, found the pile of dismembered armour, pulled its sword from its scabbard and then nearly swallowed her tongue. Someone had just blown hot and wetly in her ear. That's Binky,' said the heap. 'He's just trying to be friendly. I expect he'd like some hay, if you've got any.' With royal self-control, Keli said, This is the fourth floor. It's a lady's bedroom. You'd be amazed at how many horses we don't get up here.' 'Oh. Could you help me up, please?' She put the sword down and pulled aside a breastplate. A thin white face stared back at her. 'First, you'd better tell me why I shouldn't send for the guards anyway,' she said. 'Even being in my bedroom could get you tortured to death.' She glared at him. Finally he said, 'Well – could you let my hand free, please? Thank you – firstly, the guards probably wouldn't see me, secondly, you'll never find out why I'm here and you look as though you'd hate not to know, and thirdly. . . .' Thirdly what?' she said. His mouth opened and shut. Mort wanted to say: thirdly, you're so beautiful, or at least very attractive, or anyway far more attractive than any other girl I've ever met, although admittedly I haven't met very many. From this it will be seen that Mort's innate honesty will never make him a poet; if Mort ever compared a girl to a summer's day, it would be followed by a thoughtful explanation of what day he had in mind and whether it was raining at the time. In the circumstances, it was just as well that he couldn't find his voice. Keli held up the candle and looked at the window. It was whole. The stone frames were unbroken. Every pane, with its stained-glass representatives of the Sto Lat coat of arms, was complete. She looked back at Mort. 'Never mind thirdly,' she said, 'let's get back to secondly.' An hour later dawn reached the city. Daylight on the Disc flows rather than rushes, because light is slowed right down by the world's standing magical field, and it rolled across the flat lands like a golden sea. The city on the mound stood out like a sandcastle in the tide for a moment, until the day swirled around it and crept onwards. Mort and Keli sat side by side on her bed. The hourglass lay between them. There was no sand left in the top bulb. From outside came the sounds of the castle waking up. 'I still don't understand this,' she said. 'Does it mean I'm dead, or doesn't it?' 'It means you ought to be dead,' he said, 'according to fate or whatever. I haven't really studied the theory,' 'And you should have killed me?' 'No! I mean, no, the assassin should have killed you. I did try to explain all that,' said Mort. 'Why didn't you let him?' Mort looked at her in horror. 'Did you want to die?' 'Of course I didn't. But it looks as though what people want doesn't come into it, does it? I'm trying to be sensible about this.' Mort stared at his knees. Then he stood up. 'I think I'd better be going,' he said coldly. He folded up the scythe and stuck it into its sheath behind the saddle. Then he looked at the window. 'You came through that,' said Keli, helpfully. 'Look, when I said —' 'Does it open?' 'No. There's a balcony along the passage. But people will see you!' Mort ignored her, pulled open the door and led Binky out into the corridor. Keli ran after them. A maid stopped, curtsied, and frowned slightly as her brain wisely dismissed the sight of a very large horse walking along the carpet. The balcony overlooked one of the inner courtyards. Mort glanced over the parapet, and then mounted. 'Watch out for the duke,' he said. 'He's behind all this.' 'My father always warned me about him,' said the princess. 'I've got a foodtaster.' 'You should get a bodyguard as well,' said Mort. 'I must go. I have important things to do. Farewell,' he added, in what he hoped was the right tone of injured pride. 'Shall I see you again?' said Keli. 'There's lots I want to —' That might not be a good idea, if you think about it,' said Mort haughtily. He clicked his tongue, and Binky leapt into the air, cleared the parapet and cantered up into the blue morning sky. 'I wanted to say thank you!' Keli yelled after him. The maid, who couldn't get over the feeling that something was wrong and had followed her, said, 'Are you all right, ma'am?' Keli looked at her distractedly. 'What?' she demanded. 'I just wondered if – everything was all right?' Keli's shoulders sagged. 'No,' she said. 'Everything's all wrong. There's a dead assassin in my bedroom. Could you please have something done about it? 'And —' she held up a hand – 'I don't want you to say “Dead, ma'am?” or “Assassin, ma'am?” or scream or anything, I just want you to get something done about it. Quietly. I think I've got a headache. So just nod.' The maid nodded, bobbed uncertainly, and backed away. Mort wasn't sure how he got back. The sky simply changed from ice blue to sullen grey as Binky eased himself into the gap between dimensions. He didn't land on the dark soil of Death's estate, it was simply there, underfoot, as though an aircraft carrier had gently manoeuvred itself under a jump jet to save the pilot all the trouble of touching down. The great horse trotted into the stableyard and halted outside the double door, swishing his tail. Mort slid off and ran for the house. And stopped, and ran back, and filled the hayrack, and ran for the house, and stopped and muttered to himself and ran back and rubbed the horse down and checked the water bucket, and ran for the house, and ran back and fetched the horseblanket down from its hook on the wall and buckled it on. Binky gave him a dignified nuzzle. No-one seemed to be about as Mort slipped in by the back door and made his way to the library, where even at this time of night the air seemed to be made of hot dry dust. It seemed to take years to locate Princess Keli's biography, but he found it eventually. It was a depressingly slim volume on a shelf only reachable by the library ladder, a wheeled rickety structure that strongly resembled an early siege engine. With trembling fingers he opened it at the last page, and groaned. 'The princess's assassination at the age of fifteen,' he read, 'was followed by the union of Sto Lat with Sto Helit and, indirectly, the collapse of the city states of the central plain and the rise of—' He read on, unable to stop. Occasionally he groaned again. Finally he put the book back, hesitated, and then shoved it behind a few other volumes. He could still feel it there as he climbed down the ladder, shrieking its incriminating existence to the world. There were few ocean-going ships on the Disc. No captain liked to venture out of sight of a coastline. It was a sorry fact that ships which looked from a distance as though they were going over the edge of the world weren't in fact disappearing over the horizon, they were in fact dropping over the edge of the world. Every generation or so a few enthusiastic explorers doubted this and set out to prove it wrong. Strangely enough, none of them had ever come back to announce the result of their researches. The following analogy would, therefore, have been meaningless to Mort. He felt as if he'd been shipwrecked on the Titanic but in the nick of time had been rescued. By the Lusitonia. He felt as though he'd thrown a snowball on the spur of the moment and watched the ensuing avalanche engulf three ski resorts. He felt history unravelling all around him. He felt he needed someone to talk to, quickly. That had to mean either Albert or Ysabell, because the thought of explaining everything to those tiny blue pinpoints was not one he cared to contemplate after a long night. On the rare occasions Ysabell deigned to look in his direction she made it clear that the only difference between Mort and a dead toad was the colour. As for Albert. . . . All right, not the perfect confidant, but definitely the best in a field of one. Mort slid down the steps and threaded his way back through the bookshelves. A few hours' sleep would be a good idea, too. Then he heard a gasp, the brief patter of running feet, and the slam of a door. When he peered around the nearest bookcase there was nothing there except a stool with a couple of books on it. He picked one up and glanced at the name, then read a few pages. There was a damp lace handkerchief lying next to it. Mort rose late, and hurried towards the kitchen expecting at any moment the deep tones of disapproval. Nothing happened. Albert was at the stone sink, gazing thoughtfully at his chip pan, probably wondering whether it was time to change the fat or let it bide for another year. He turned as Mort slid into a chair. 'You had a busy tune of it, then,' he said. 'Gallivanting all over the place until all hours, I heard. I could do you an egg. Or there's porridge.' 'Egg, please,' said Mort. He'd never plucked up the courage to try Albert's porridge, which led a private life of its own in the depths of its saucepan and ate spoons. 'The master wants to see you after,' Albert added, 'but he said you wasn't to rush.' 'Oh.' Mort stared at the table. 'Did he say anything else?'