#the trial hurts me so good 😔🫶

[secret-smut-sideblog]

The Phoenix

Lavellan x Blackwall

PG-13 - confrontation, implied abuse, fear, guilt, implied torture, (explicit) eye injury, longing, tenderness

The trial to judge her lost love upon her, she must make heavy choices with new eyes...

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-

"Focus."

She pushed it forward with eyes wide. Fingers held on the taut string. The circle of her spectral sight rushed to the target.

Suddenly, it was as clear as if she had stood within arms reach. Releasing the arrow into the dead center of the ring, far down in the ravine.

"That was 80 yards!" Bull whistled.

She smiled as she lowered the bow, wind whipping her hair. Heir's hand came to her shoulder, making her jump. Her sight still far ahead at the target.

"You are vulnerable while you deal death, shadow. Stay in dark or have another shield your sides."

"Shooting blind." She laughed. Her vision reformed to rest around her and her teacher's face took up shape again within it. Like eyes pulling from the horizon. Not so different, she found.

"Yes, you are twice as deadly and just as susceptible now. Keep mind of yourself. Keep training."

"Thank you, death-guide." She leaned her head into Heir's shoulder, and the assassin's head leaned into her shoulder in turn. A silent Dalish show of great respect.

Learning to wield her blind eyes was invigorating in a way she hadn't anticipated. Just navigating Skyhold was a new journey, using her memory to keep track of the surroundings outside her scope of vision. Her sense of cardinal direction had always been strong from navigating forests, and sound and smell filled out where her vision couldn't extend. Certain of her location by the sound of revelry at Herald's Rest and the smell of hay from the stables.

The stables...

She couldn't bring herself to go where he had been yet. Certain that the scent of him soaked in every fur would overwhelm her.

"Hey, Sunshine." Varric's voice. "Josephine sent me."

She stepped towards the sound and his ghostly visage took up again.

"Ah, sorry. Forgot you couldn't see me." He stepped a little closer apologetically.

"We're all getting used to it." She smiled.

"The distance..." He remarked thoughtfully. "Hold on. Say when."

She held still, watching him until he dissipated from her vision after several backward steps.

"There. You're gone."

"Interesting. That's about nine tall paces. But it extends in a circle, right?"

She nodded, and Varric slipped behind her back. He held up his fingers.

"Two. One. Three." She recited.

"Hot damn." He laughed.

"Advantages and disadvantages." She agreed.

"And it works in the dark?" He pulled a messy journal from his belt.

"It does. Am I going to get a rough draft?" She teased.

"Shit, you really can see me." He laughed.

"You were here with something?" She reminded, turning towards him if only to be polite.

"Oh! Right..." His face fell. "He's here."

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes heavily as she released it.

"Want to walk me back?"

"I'd love to." He smiled, offering his shoulder to her palm.

Quiet reverent chatter rose in her wake. A few whispers behind hands. A new title had cropped up: The Blinded Light. At least they weren't calling her Herald as much.

"I have to know..." He led as they walked.

She smiled ruefully at him.

"Brown. Like a warm brick home."

Varric placed his hand under his heart where the color of him radiated invisible to his eyes. Giving a permissive little smile.

"Damn, I was hoping for red."

-

Sitting on the throne would never stop feeling unnatural. Made even more uncomfortable by the circumstances she was about to face.

As soon as the great door groaned opened, she stood again. Searching the ground for where his form was about to take up. The shift of feet and clank of chains made her heart ache.

Josephine's eyes were steady on her in sympathy. Stepping forward to announce the trial.

"For judgment this day, Inquisitor, I must present Captain Thom Rainer..."

He finally appeared in front of her. Head bowed and led forward by two guards.

She pressed her palm to the hollow between her ribs. An old self soothing she had carried since childhood. Stifling a shaken breath.

"Formerly known to us as Warden Blackwall."

The guards shoved him at the base of the steps. The same steps he had led her down from countless times.

His eyes held down.

"His crimes..." Josephine gave her another look of soft apology. "Well, you are aware of his crimes."

"The decision of what to do with him is yours."

"Thank you, Josephine."

She nodded, and stepped out of her sight again.

There was a whole gathered party of those who attended to watch his trial.

But in her eyes, in her world, it was just them alone.

Two people who had loved each other so dearly. Now stood on the precipice of opposite cliff edges.

She stepped down to the ledge of the stairs. Staring at the fine shifting sand of his face. How different, but wholly the same he was in this light.

"I hate this." Her eyes watered behind the blindfold. How badly she wanted to touch him.

"You should've left me. I was ready." The growl of his voice both soothed and spiked ache in her heart.

"Your hands are dirtied now. You're a criminal like me." He accused darkly, finally looking up at her. His brows briefly creased in confusion at her missing vallasin.

"Do not speak to her that way." Josephine commanded. The cold poison of the tone sent a shiver up her spine. "I ordered your retrieval. Her hands are clean, and I'd remind you of the condition she was put in to delegate that power to me in the first place."

His eyes fell in shame. Speaking to the ground again. "Apologies, lady ambassador."

"Don't apologize to me." She led as she stepped back again.

"Vella..." He looked up at her.

The mournful call almost crumpled her heart.

"That is not my name. It..."

They couldn't speak truly to one another here, and she refused to be false with him.

"It hurts too much to use." She hushed in Elvhen.

He shook his head, his brow furrowed in despair.

"Why am I being spared?" His eyes met hers with incidiary guilt again. "What becomes of me now?"

This was the easy part.

There was no other way her heart could lean.

"You're free."

"It cannot be that simple." His eyes lowered again, shaking his head in anger.

"It isn't. You can atone as the man you are, the man you've been to me, and nothing less. I will not permit you to fall into your own lie in my stead. I was true to you the entire way, and I ask you to be true to yourself now."

"You would accept that?" His eyes narrowed in soft disbelief, still skirting her gaze. The sight he thought she perceived him with far different to the one she wielded now.

"And what I used to be?" He finally met her shielded gaze fully.

He stepped up the first few steps with tentative hope.

"I lied to you about who I was, but I never lied about what I felt."

How she already missed the slight blue in his eyes. She tried to hold the color in memory, to still see it inside the steel of his tender gaze.

"You have always carried my heart. I leave it in your hands now." His voice gave the slightest shake.

She stared down the cliff face. Pebbles skittered under her feet.

How easy it would be to jump. To fall to the death of it. All their pain choked love left a dignified death. Shattered on the sorrow slicked rocks far below.

It would be the most honest way. To sever the cord of their tangle. A clean cut. Free to lick their wounds in the privacy of their own strife. So much had been shattered already. It would be kind to let the rest topple over the edge.

Her hand pressed hard to her ribs. The vertigo swimming in her belly.

She stepped back from the edge.

"I want to walk with you again. I want to know you. To be with you. But it's going to take time for me to trust you again. Would you wait with me?"

"I would wait until time ended." He hushed.

His eyes fell once more. "But I don't know how to be with you as Thom Rainier."

She stepped down to him. Pulling the blindfold from her eyes.

His breath stilled. Staring at the blinded cloud of her eyes in despondent shock.

"I will have you as you are. But if you ever. Ever. Come to me with violence like that again..."

Her eyes narrowed in certainty. Letting her venomous words ring true.

"I refuse to live in fear of an angry man in my home. Not ever again. I will slit your throat first. Understood?"

He nodded. Guilt tight in his shoulders.

"Okay." She whispered. Cupping his cheek in her palm.

"We'll take it one step at a time." She sighed.

He leaned into her hand with tightly closed eyes. Rising a chained hand to cup her forearm.

She rose on tiptoes and planted a soft kiss on his lips. He pressed into her kiss with renewed passion. The weight of it profound against her tender touch.

He stepped back quickly, seeming to remember their agreement. Staring up at her blind eyes as gratitude and deep sorrow danced in equal parts behind his gaze. Giving her a little toss of the head as he retreated that pulled a small smile from her.

Bowing his head one last time, he turned from her. Shoulders heavy with his own burdens. Stepping into the world beyond her.

-

"This is an eluvian."

She stepped forward, staring up at the expanse of swirling glass. A glowing iridescent river trapped in a deceptively flat plane.

"I heard you've taken up the moniker 'Vella' again?" Morrigan crossed her arms, staring at her wonder with appreciation.

"It's easier for the others." She rose a flat palm to hover just outside of the sliding color. "It doesn't hurt like it used to, anyway."

"I can see the color of it." Vella sighed. "It's powerful magic, isn't it?"

"Correct." Morrigan smiled. "An artifact stolen from your people long before their empire was lost to human greed."

"I can feel it." Vella smiled. Smoothing a hand over the frame. A pleasant tingle in her palm.

"I thought you might. Though you've diverted the full power of your gift, the Pantheon still favors you."

"I suppose I should be patroned by Ghilan'nain now." She sighed. How weary she was to the meddling of gods. "Solas has implied as much."

"Ah, yes. I've heard you've been traversing thine dreams with the apostate. He is correct, the blind goddess of navigation is more suited to your circumstances. But elven gods have never given up their mortal holds graciously."

"They've started wars over far less." Vella agreed.

"It is so refreshing to speak to the educated. Come. Let us travel."

Morrigan's hands wound back and pushed forward. Beckoning the mirror open with a gust of heavily laced wind.

"It's a portal!" Vella smiled wide.

Morrigan smiled slyly, stepping through. Disappearing behind a ripple of indigo water.

That drop in her belly that moving between rifts pulled as Vella stepped through. She had heard of veil jumpers long ago and wondered how they could stomach it so often.

"Ah!" She shielded her eyes as the plane filled fully around her.

"You can see here..." Morrigan led, curiosity tinged in her words.

"It's like this in dreams too." Vella blinked rapidly, letting her hand fall. "All color and horizons again."

"Fascinating. And still no call of Dirthamen?"

"No. But I think if I stayed too long, he would fill me again." She marveled at the misty stretching scenery. "It's kind of beautiful here."

"I agree." Morrigan looked out at the standing sea of dead mirrors. Guarded by bare antler branched trees.

"If this place once had a name, it has long been lost." Morrigan smiled slyly at her again. "How familiar."

"I'm going to miss you, when you move on." Vella smiled.

"I may miss you too." Morrigan sighed with aggravated endearment.

Vella stepped forward, holding out her arms to let the mist comb through the dance of her fingers. Places like this always felt familiar. Something achingly close to a home, though she could never place why.

"This is a place I call the Crossroads. A between of realms, a nexus of traveling. It is an unnatural place, but you seem to find it agreeable."

"I'd like to stay for a while. Is it safe to visit on my own?" Vella looked over her shoulder at Morrigan's smile of soft disbelief.

"Does your lineage have a history of traveling?"

"My father's side all died quite young from madness. I know little of my mother's side. Father refused to speak of her in his grief. But I still carry her silver with me."

Morrigan looked her up and down, clearly questioning her lack of jewelry.

Vella extended her tongue, giving a cheeky smile around it.

"Oh the Chantry despised you, didn't they?" Morrigan laughed.

"They made the wound, but I got to close it." Vella offered easily, a sparkle of mischief in her voice.

"My father said once that I took after her. Maybe she did know of traveling. Gods, what I wouldn't have given for a place like this when I was in the wilds. Years it would've saved me."

"But I imagine your journey made you much more capable. The wilds have a knack for that." Her voice confident in experience.

"I never would've become a rogue." Vella agreed. "I wouldn't have learned the harsh of winter, how to hunt, how to fall into shadow. How to kill with mercy or malice."

"But we're here for a reason." Vella waved her hand affably. "I've taken us off trail. Please, go on."

"Well, to answer your question, I am uncertain if you should linger here alone. Though, perhaps someone familiar as you seem to be could safely do so. And yet, Corypheus seeks to wield this place to reach the Fade in the flesh. To tear down the ancient barriers."

"Of course." Vella sighed. "Warping Elven artifacts for personal gain is a favorite past-time of Magisters."

"Naturally." Morrigan smiled, beckoning her back to the swirling mirror. "Desperate men make easier prey, sister. And you've made Corypheus quite so. I shall enjoy working together when you are prepared."

Morrigan stepped through, striding with confidence.

Vella paused in her momentary isolation.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and called out a fox cry to seek kin.

It echoed far into the mist. Almost seeming to double back to her.

She smiled wide and stepped back into her world of greys once more.

-

The stone of guilt in his belly was so heavy that it should've pulled him through the earth. That he could move at all was an affront.

The eyes that followed his trail to the turret cut into his skin with deserved slashes. Skyhold, in its entire, was against him now. Not only for what he had been, what he had done, his past fair incentive to distrust him. But the added injury of what he had put her through. Their people's adoration of her made the torment he had unleashed upon her personal.

He had tried to approach Cullen, if just to thank him. If he hadn't been there... If he hadn't arrived when he did...

But the man reviled him in such a way that he commanded him from his office. Only giving one rage tight sentence in his dismissal.

"What you did to her is unforgivable, pray to the Maker that you can atone."

His nightmares had been taken up only by that terrible moment. Playing over and over with worse outcomes.

Just the fear in her eyes when he had tried to scare her away was enough to ache in his heart for eternity. The way she had scattered back, raising her forearm to shield from the ghost of a strike. He had nearly fallen to knees to apologize, to beg the terror of him from her eyes.

But then she had been forced up high onto the tips of knees, eyes so terribly wide in silver. Seeing beyond with her lips fallen slack, face wrenched up to the damp ceiling.

Then she started screaming.

The sound reverberated in his nightmares. When she started begging in the words of his victims. Grasping at her throat for a noose that had long since rotted away.

With the terror of dawning horror, he understood.

She was not only seeing it. The dog. The Calliers.

She was experiencing it.

He had been utterly helpless behind bars. To shout for her. To beg for her. To not take the pain that he had caused. Not her. Please, not her. Shouting to the Maker for it all to stop. To stop it in the way he hadn't then.

When she had pulled her dagger from her side, he began slamming his shoulder into the door. Begging her to stop. Calling for her again and again as his body crashed into iron. Unable to keep the blade from her.

He couldn't help. He couldn't even reach her. Not in body or words. He had to watch through repeated blows of his shoulder as the blade entered her cheekbone. Blood spilling river down her chest. Dragging up. Splitting the lower of her eyelid.

Then Cullen had sprinted to her. Knocking the blade away. Catching her just as her mind finally gave. Blood pouring from her eye, her nose, the hollow of her ear. Cupping the back of her head just as it was about to crack into the stone floor. Gathering her tightly seized body to his chest. Kneeled in the aftermath of his crimes.

That replayed behind his lids every time he fell to sleep with new, more terrible ends. Where Cullen hadn't arrived. Where she hadn't screamed loud enough. Where he was forced to watch the whole way.

He had taken up her habit of pacing to keep from sleep. Looping small circles in his cell all night like a kenneled mongrel. The guards preferred his circling to the scream of his night terrors anyway.

Of everything he deserved, he couldn't accept forgiveness, not this soon. He was grateful that she hadn't accepted him back with fully open arms. That she had chosen to keep some distance. It allowed him to grieve everything that had happened in his stead without her consoling.

He didn't know if he could take her trying to comfort him. Not after everything. Not with the stitches still under her clouded eyes. Not with the badge of failure of the mottled purple bruise of his shoulder.

The only people who treated him with any level of familiarity were Cole, and, shockingly, Solas.

When he saw her bare face... Maker, her eyes...

That man always knew well beyond his means, and this had been no exception.

He had to know.

His heart begged for some reprieve, but he had to. He had cornered him in a high turret a night before, now he returned to receive the end of his retelling.

Solas seemed all too keen to fill him in on the dire changes in his absence. Reciting in great detail the silent despair that had taken her. The hollow pain in her eyes and her choice to blind them forever.

He realized that Solas was enjoying giving him this recounting. A malicious satisfaction behind the easy canter of his words. Watching his heart fall further and further into the earth. Finding pleasure in his deserved anguish.

"Her sight is only a shadowed circle now." Solas leaned back in the crook of the stone window. "Seeing only within her vicinity."

He gave a permissive sigh. Finally relenting the gratification of his torment.

"But she is far better off now. Her mind is her own. She can sleep."

His eyes glittered in delight.

"Better yet; she can dream."

"What?" Thom's heart lifted with the rise of his bowed head.

"We have been traveling together. Her dreams are sprawling and beautiful. Beheld with the wonder and imagination of a child. She is an excellent dreamer. I have treasured walking alongside her."

"And her god has no hold? She can't be taken over again?" The desperate plea of his voice strangled under the hopeful lump in his throat.

"Correct. His influence was once a mad sprint across her mind. Now, it is tamed to a crawl. To attend to the constant of her sight, it exhausts. Pulls it paper thin. Dirthamen was never a steady presence. More suited to bursts. It is an unnatural strain for his power to attend so dutifully."

Solas sighed again. Looking out over the forest far below.

"I'm loathe to admit, but your torment of her seemed to align with the best outcome. It came with a heavy cost, like all worthwhile endeavors. But her life should extend much farther towards the horizon now."

Thom looked at him in dawning cold.

"She didn't tell you?" Solas' eyes met his again. "Ah, I guess there's no harm now."

"Before..." He waved his hand. "All this, she had a handful of years left. A little less each time she attuned."

He looked down at the forest again. His eyes soft on the treeline.

"It's understandable that she kept that close to her chest. It's a terrible thing. Knowing."

Thom rushed him, overcome with gratitude. Gathering the miserable little man in a tight hug.

"That's quite enough of that." The clip of his voice almost made him laugh. Pulling away with wet eyes.

"Why are you up here anyway?" He allowed his voice to fill gruff again. Adjusting his tone back to stalwart.

Solas smiled. "Seeking frivolous comforts."

Thom stared lost at him, but Solas held up his hand in a bid to wait.

They both stared down, waiting for something Thom was unsure he wanted to indulge.

"There she is." Solas whispered. An uncharacteristically sweet smile pulled his lips.

Then Thom heard it. The haunting high call of her singing. Risen up through trees.

At first just sweeping notes, her voice trembling tenderly with disuse. But then it moved into melody. An Elvhen song he didn't recognize, near a lullaby, but more mournful.

But Solas recognized it.

His brow creased as his eyes fell closed.

"Oh..." His voice fell tender.

She rose it in cresting cries. A song about a lonely wolf, calling for lost family.

Wolf brother

You're adrift, shape that shifts

Spirit strong, child of sorrow

But there was only you

And your haunted joy borrowed

Solas pressed his hand to his chest. Letting his head fall forward.

There was still no echo to howl

Despite the cold ground you cover

Wolf of sorrow, can you hear my call

Can you feel my warm bite, my growl

Listen now and alone do not suffer

Aho-

At the final word, she rose it high, sustaining the note. A plaintive imitation of a howl.

She rang it in the air until wolves from far in the forest joined her. Howling harmony into her song.

She held it for a moment longer, then released it in one bright laugh. Delighted to have successfully called her choir as the howls echoed in her absence.

"She..." Solas' voice was overcome. Staring down with his hand still pressed hard.

He shook his head. Letting out a tight breath.

"Be good to her."

-

Vella rocketed up from sleep. Gasping out with her hand tight to her chest. Heart racing under her palm.

"Fenedhis lasa..." She cursed, looking around the grey of her tent.

Getting her bearings back from dreaming was still extremely disorienting. And with Solas electing to stay back from their expedition, she was walking alone tonight.

What a terrible time to have her first nightmare.

Thom... Blackwall?...had taken up the place of her father. Shouting down at her. Enraged that she had returned from the forest. That she had survived the cold he had left her in. A cruel half memory.

She gathered the kicked away blankets, shrouding them around her shaken shoulders. Risen to feet, padding out into the chill of night. Skirting around the low fire, headed to the far corner of camp.

His tent appeared on the edge of her vision.

"Hey..." She murmured, crawling inside. "Are you awake?"

"Are you alright?" The warm growl of his voice was a perfect balm. Risen onto elbows in alarm.

"Not really." She sighed, drawing nearer on knees. He reached in the dark for her, but withdrew his hand after a moment. A mournful crease in his brow.

"Nightmares are pretty awful, huh?" She pulled her knees tight to her chest.

"Yeah, they are." He murmured.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He offered after a moment.

She shook her head, then remembered he couldn't see her. But the message seemed to translate anyway.

But he knew she could see him, even though he was blind in the dark. He held his arms open in offering.

She let out a shaky breath, and shuffled forward. Falling into his arms in a soft slump. Tightly closing her eyes in the warm expanse of his embrace, her arms folded between them.

"I missed you." She sniffled, pressing her face into his chest.

His arms wound tight around her. Pressing his face into the crown of her head as he breathed in deep. He seemed about to say something, but shook his head. Only pulling her closer.

After a long moment, she pulled back and finally allowed herself to find it.

Her fingers probed the space under his heart. Focusing to see it. His breath held in anticipation.

"Of course." She smiled. Tracing her fingers around the glow. "Emerald. The forest."

His hand pressed over hers. Looking down at her with everything within a kiss.

"Could we lay down?" She sighed.

"Of course." He whispered, pulling her back with him.

"Maker, you're freezing. Come here, darling."

He pulled a thick blanket over them. Wrapping around her back, his body the warmest shield. Once again, she found him all around her. His shape became her shape. Their bodies melded in a rhyming song of comfort.

"I've been meaning to ask..."

"Hmm?" He murmured, settling his arm around her belly.

"What should I call you?" She whispered. "Gods, it's weird to be on the other side of that question."

He chuckled quietly, kissing her shoulder.

"I've been thinking about it. I think Blackwall. It's become more of a title. But..." He kissed the point of her ear. The rumble of his voice filled the well. "Could you keep calling me bear?"

"Hmm..." She smiled. "Only if you call me dove."

"I missed you." He sighed, voice thick with sorrow. "So much, dove. I'm so sorry... for everything."

"I know." She whispered. "Get some sleep, bear."

He settled into the soft of her neck. Letting out a great sigh of contentment. Wrapped in a protective curl around her, drifting off into deep, even breathed sleep.

~

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