Chapter Text
The ground under her fingers was soft and moist and her knees sunk a little bit in to the earth, the material of her trousers soaking up the water from the bank of the river.
Wait, she thought, a little bit dizzy. What river?
The sounds around her were muted, as if she was in a glass tank, the world around her dull; somebody took a softening brush and blurred the edges of everything around her.
There was soft earth under her fingers and she could feel some of it digging under her nails as she was still kneeling on the ground. A noise, more piercing than the rest, came from behind her. Her ears were slightly ringing. She pulled her hands from the ground, adjusted her hair, straightened herself, and turned.
A green tear shaped like gash in the world was glowing, hovering in the air, uninviting and menacing. It breathed like a living thing, widening and shrinking within the passing second as she stared at it. She opened her eyes wide, a shallow gasp escaping her mouth as the tear stretched impossibly, as if it was about to explode and then… Then she heard a guttural roar.
She whipped her head to her left and she saw it. It looked almost like a tree, branches twisted, but they were too smooth, and the thing had impossibly long legs and arms. Its fingers were at least as long as her arm, hooked and sharp at the ends, and its eyes, many many eyes, too many eyes, were looking straight at her.
Suddenly, the world around her came in full force, knocking the breath out of her lungs, making her ribs ache in the process. She could smell the water and damp ground, there were sounds of grunts and huffs somewhere near. Somebody screamed to her right, something familiar, but she was staring at the creature, the rows of white, pointy teeth located where the thing’s collarbone and chest should be.
It had teeth. Where the collarbone. Should be.
There was a roar that made her flinch and blink. The earth shook under her as a giant man with horns that were definitely the length and almost size of her torso charged the humanoid tree and sunk its giant axe deep into the creature's chest, a gush of green sap spilling from the wound, colouring the metal of the axe green.
There was no air in her lungs and she had to make herself breathe and look around. There were rocks surrounding her with tree roots and smaller plants protruding from between them. A smallish waterfall behind her cut off one of the escape roads. She made herself take another breath. And another.
And she did what she almost always did when faced with stress, so much stress that her heart was about to burst, when she could feel and hear her own heartbeat, when the pressure behind her eyes was getting just a little bit too strong.
She calmly assed the situation — which was bad — the pressure making her make a choice and quickly.
She slowly gathered herself up.
Turned to the only way out of the small canyon.
And she started to run.
“Helen!” She heard her own name somewhere behind her, but in that moment it sounded only vaguely familiar, like a memory she was only just remembering, or a dream. I can breathe again, she thought, her feet splashing the water from the riverbank, the legs of her jeans slowly soaking.
She could barely hear the fight behind her. Only the steady breaths mattered.
After a minute, or two, she slowed to a jog. Then, she stopped altogether, her breathing heavy, dark hair clinging to her sweaty forehead, the road ahead unfamiliar, unknown and terrifying.
She stopped, almost ankle deep in the river, her trainers soaked and probably ruined, but what was the most important she could breathe again, she could think, because what the fuck was that and where the hell was she?
“Scared, so scared, but can breathe again,” a voice said, soft, almost a whisper. She turned suddenly, her head spinning, her mouth dry. “Hello. I’m Cole. I’m here to help,” said the pale boy before her, the brim of his hat obscuring half of his white face, but she knew what he looked like. How pale he was, how skinny, but amazingly here, before her he stood. A little bit awkwardly, slouched, his fingers near his side as if he didn’t know what to do with them.
She didn’t think he would be so… tall. The game made him look smaller, more gaunt, but in this little canyon, where the river slowly flowed, he looked more like a boy, a teen. A fragile one, in mismatched clothes, but a human nonetheless.
“I am so, so sorry,” he added, not moving, not even blinking. “But this is not a dream”.
“No,” she said, her words a whisper, the air in her lungs burning, the heart stopped for a second and leaped into a higher gear. “This must be a dream”.
They were silent for a moment, looking at each other, until a sound behind him made her look away. In the split of a second he was gone, but the people coming towards her weren’t.
She was going crazy. Utterly crazy, there was no other way, no acceptable explanation.
Or maybe she died and this was a cruel joke? She wanted to pinch herself just to check, but she still was fighting for breath and she needed it, just in case. The people in front of her looked real, so real it nearly hurt. There was blood on their armours, especially on Bull’s… well, especially on Bull. Thick, with a dark tint, it stuck to his greyish skin. He tried to wipe it off in some places, but made it look more macabre, like an unfinished painting done by a toddler, using blood instead of jam or paint. He was looking at her, curiously. His axe slung on his back, arms near his sides ready…
“Are you fucking kidding me,” she snarled, pointing accusatory finger at Bull. “I’m at least one-fifth of your weight, you could at least pretend not to try to chop my head off, ok!”
He blinked, once. Leaned back his head a little bit, and laughed.
“Hey!” She screamed, a little too loud. “That’s not even remotely funny!”
There was another muffled laugh to Bull’s left, as the Herald of Andraste tried to cover up her grin. She was Helen’s height if not one or two inches taller, her ink black hair in a tight ponytail, and there were few drops of drying blood on her cheek. In her late twenties, if not early thirties, the Herald looked like another young woman who really enjoyed larping. If it wasn’t for the blood and the bow behind her head, Helen would have thought that was just it: LARPing. But she noticed Herald’s scar on the cheek, starting near her right ear and ending near her chin. It looked healed, but the skin around it was still red in some places.
Helen took a deeper breath, looking at the rest of the people around her. There was Iron Bull, still looking at her curiously with his one eye and Dorian Pavus was leaning in Herald’s space, whispering something to her. The woman nodded at the man’s words, and showed Helen her hands, both of them. The left, normal and human, the right shining with a sickly green light.
“Look, we aren’t here to hurt you…” The Heralds started, slowly.
“Maybe you shouldn't be showing her your right hand, darling? It kind of glows,” said Dorian smoothly.
“Aw, crap,” the woman looked at her glowing green hand kind of distracted, then hid it behind her and with the left one outstretched, continued “We aren’t here to hurt you…”
“Oh, that’s even worse!”
“What do you want me to do, Dorian?”
“How should I know!”
“Herald,” a smooth voice interrupted and Helen nearly jumped when a bald man with pointed ears came closer. Her breath stopped as her heart did a "holy shit I am looking at a god right now."
Suddenly there were tears in her eyes and her stomach did a flip. She doubled over and a somebody grabbed her hair. A gentle whisper in her ear saying, “Come one get it out of your system. That’s right, like that,” as she was literally puking her guts out. When she was done the vile stench was overwhelming and when a full waterskin was thrust in her hands, she used half of it to reduce the taste of acid in her mouth, spitting the water out.
“Here,” the Herald of Andraste said, putting a couple leaves in her open palm. “Bite on these, but don’t swallow. They will reduce the aftermath.”
She took the leaves from the woman’s open palm and shoved it to her mouth, chewing as if her life depended on it. It took a while, but the minty flavour of the plant made the taste in her mouth somewhat better.
“Come,” said the Herald, touching her gently on the shoulder “We have a camp nearby. You can rest and, well, I can tell you how we found you.”
She nodded, and led by the Herald, turned to the way of a small opening.
“Wait,” she realised suddenly, stopping in the middle of the exit from the canyon. “You called me Helen, you know my name, how do you know my name?”
The Herald smiled, softly.
“I’ll tell you when we’ll get to the camp. I’m Evelyn, by the way. Evelyn Trevelyan. We’ve met. Sort of,” she added seeing Helen’s confusing look. “I promise you I will tell you everything once we get to the cam. You’re wet, look miserable and… I just can’t add more to that. Come,” the touch on her arm was warm, and Evelyn squeezed her hand, reassuringly. Helen nodded, partially dazed, partially confused and followed the way back to the camp with the Herald of Andraste guiding her path.
Redcliffe was, in not so many words, a fucking nightmare.
Helen was sitting with Evelyn near the campfire. There was a thick, woollen blanket on her back and another one on her knees; she felt wrapped like a caterpillar.
Evelyn chose her words. From describing how she got to Redcliffe to meet Alexius and mages, to the heated conversation she had with the Tevinter mage, to ultimately the strange portal that swallowed her and Dorian and sent them a year in the future.
She was calm. Until she started talking about time travelling.
“I was... “ Started Evelyn, her fingers fidgeting, trying to find something to do. After a second she decided to close and open one of her pouches, over and over again. “It was utterly terrifying. The castle looked so different that for the longest time I thought we were in a completely different part of Thedas. The red lyrium was everywhere; on the walls, the doors and the worst of it, on the people and the corpses. There were bodies from which the lyrium grew and I don’t think I will be able to ever get that image from my head.” She unbuckled the pouch fidgeting with the iron braces and closed it again. “For Maker’s sake, they littered the whole rooms, you couldn’t even see the damn floor,” she added bitterly. “And the lyrium grew on these poor people like a fucking fungus! There were so many demons and Venatori. The whole sky was green. And there…” She took a calming breath. “And there were you”
Silence filled the space between two women.
“Me?”
Evelyn nodded.
“You were waiting for us near the cells. No,” she shook her head. “Waiting is not a good word. You were on a lookout. Not for us, mind you,” a shadow of a smile appeared on the woman's lips, turning the scar into something more grotesque than it should have been. “You were checking if everything was right. According to the story.”
“You introduced yourself. You were so out of place, your tone, the simple introduction. I’m Helen Abbott, you said. Gave me your hand and we shook. We simply couldn’t just go our merry way and not listen to you,” she snorted, bitterly. “You told us that you have fallen out of a rift in Hinterlands, alone and confused and after a couple days of walking you met Alexius’ Venatori. They took one look at your clothes and simply cuffed you and took you to the mage,” Evelyn was hesitant for a moment and glanced at Helen. “You said that you had information crucial for Alexius and the Elder One. And you added that you were no fan of pain. We,” she gestured at her and Dorian who was sitting nearby, not interrupting but listening. “Added one to two, and then you just… talked. About what happened before, about my conversation with Leliana, Cassandra and Josephine when I was first held as a prisoner, you asked me for details: which road did I choose in the mountains? You asked me who I recruited so far and you give me details of our conversations. How Bull admitted during our first meeting that he was a spy, how Sera asked the noble to say ‘what’ and shot him. It was too specific to be a guess or a coincidence. You then give us the complete layout of the levels, in which prison cells would I find my companions. Not that I didn’t believe you by then.”
“I didn’t, to be completely honest,” chimed in Dorian. He made a face when Evelyn gave him a nasty look.
“Then,” Evelyn gave Dorian a stern look, seemingly unfazed by his comment. He shrugged nonchalantly, but fondly looked at the Herald. “You guided us to Leliana...”
Helen shivered at the mention of the Spymaster. She remembered how she looked like in the game, her face dead and grey, her features rough and aghast.
There was a pause. And then a longer one.
“I guided you to Leliana, and then…?”
Evelyn looked at Dorian. Dorian looked at Evelyn.
“I’m going to be blunt,” started Dorian. Evelyn rolled her eyes. Helen’s whole existence stopped; her brain couldn’t process more information. There was too much of it and too little at the same time and the synapsis in Helen’s brain haven’t decided on which out of the two they wanted to settle. The words made sense, she understood them fully, but their meaning… was too bizarre, too irrational for Helen to get.
“Maybe we should tell her…”
“Leliana stabbed you, called you a monstrous, heartless witch with no faith in Andraste, and let you bleed to death on the cold, castle floor.”
Helen looked at him, terrified. Evelyn looked shocked and muttered under her breath “Harsh!”
“Well, are we going to cocoon her in the finest silks? No. The world is brutal. We are at war.”
“Still! Harsh!”
Helen paused, her index finger motionless in the air.
“That… kind of sounds totally like Leliana. What? That’s true!” She added quickly, seeing how utterly speechless Evelyn was. “Leliana is terrifying and goes straight to the point. If she saw me as a threat, the least she would do is to eliminate me herself. Judging by how you omitted what physical state I was, I can assume that during the year in Redcliffe I was at some point tortured. As I said… will say? As I am saying, I’m not very good with prolonged pain.”
“See! She understands!”
The Herald only shook her head in disbelief and both Helen and Dorian.
Helen hesitated for a moment looking at the future Inquisitor. She was much younger than she expected, the game’s graphics made her look at least in her mid thirties. But sitting next to her, near this small campfire, surrounded by friends — well, companions — she looked much younger. Almost too young to bear such a burden. Saving the world? It was for fools and ones who couldn't imagine the hardships that came with his type of adventure. It was blood and sweat with a goal that was not always worth it.
And, after all, she didn’t really believe it wasn’t a dream.
She chewed on her lower lip for a moment and turned to Evelyn.
“Did I say something? While I was, you know…?”
The other woman nodded.
“You asked me to find you. You told me you could help, that you wanted to help and that if given a chance you would.”
Helen shook her head, her mind speeding. If the future Helen told Evelyn that there was something that she could do, then she was probably right. There weren’t any better words to be said when one was dying, especially after what that version of Helen went through. She always wanted her last words to be useful to change something. She didn’t have them prepared, she always thought that she would either die alone or at least with a small family beside her. The normal stuff. But she had to the ’t’ words she would say on her grandmother’s deathbed.
She was silent, still thinking, when Evelyn asked her something, then repeated her name again, gentler.
“Sorry, yes?”
“It would be best if we all went to beds now. We ride tomorrow the earliest we can. We still need to make it to Haven and, well, sort this mage thing. I kind of didn’t tell Cassandra and Cullen what my plans were before going to Redcliffe and they have only received my letter trying to explain this whole thing? They’re going to be at least furious. By my accounts we should make it to Haven before the mages, and then… closing the Breach is our priority.”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” Helen stood, her woollen blanket falling to the ground. Evelyn bent down and put it in Helen’s hands, smiling softly. She held Helen’s hand in her own and said while looking into her eyes:
“Don’t worry. Everything is going to be alright.”
Helen wanted to believe that. She really did. She wanted so badly to believe it was a dream. But her heart thudded in her chest, there was dirt under her fingernails and she knew that if she would think about it some more she would be a sobbing mess.
She had no time for it. She ended up in the most unfortunate time in the game. Closing the Breach meant a small victory for the Herald as the same day the Elder One would launch an attack that would ride the Inquisition out of Haven and into Skyhold. In the game, the whole journey took minutes. But being here now? She had to come up with a sort of plan for survival. As Dorian said, it was war, and she didn’t have to make any imprint on it. She didn’t need to, the Herald would be just fine without her.
Evelyn escorted Helen to her own tents, showed her the new clothes so that she could blend in and bid her good night.
Helen did things mechanically, as if someone else took control over her body. She took off her clothes and put them in a neat pile on a small table. Washed her face. Put on everything she had received undergarments together with her hoodie that still smelled like river and dirt and faintly of home.
She didn’t sleep, not the whole night.
Instead she made a plan.