Chapter Text
She was exhausted. It wasn’t just the lingering effects of the fever that had gripped her when she stepped out of the Fade nor was it the injuries she had sustained in the battle that followed. It was the endless trek that had brought them down pilgrim trails from the mountains and across the open plains of the hinterlands.
Her journey to the Conclave had been much more sedate, the train of horses and carts and their attendants had only been able to move so fast uphill and Didier had chosen to load his expedition so heavily that the last few miles had been taken at a crawl.
Not that she was any stranger to hard work - to being up before dawn and not stopping ‘til nightfall. But cleaning and serving tables was an entirely different thing to tramping across the chilly, windswept plains as they had been doing for the past eleven days.
She was relieved when Cassandra finally declared that they would make camp that evening in a small clearing of well off of the road. Someone had used this spot before she realised as she sank down onto a fallen log for in the centre of the clearing was the burnt out remains of a fire pit.
Varric gently eased himself down next to her. Like her, he was a native to the cities and was used to cobbles not mountain paths under his feet. The lines on his face showed the strain the journey had placed on him and his skin looked grey under his perpetual Marchers tan. The dwarf had been silent the last few miles of their day’s journey and the long walk had felt colder and lonelier without his constant chatter and jokes at the Seeker’s expense.
He took an out an intricately carved pipe and began filling it from a small pouch at his waist. Even at a distance, its rich and earthy smell marked it as high quality. She had developed something of a taste for the dog weed tobacco favoured by sailors a few years back. Sailors on leave had had been more than happy to settled accounts at the end of an evening with goods in trade as well as with coin. But that had been smoked wrapped in thin curls of paper or tree bark that stained her fingertips yellow. It had been some time since she had indulged in that particular habit. Some time indeed, since she had been in Val Royeaux. The Conclave had seen to that. He caught her looking then and with a quirk of his eyebrow offered her his pipe.
“Want some Rosebud?”
“Rosebud…?” She asked, confused.
“Y’know, rosebuds, petals all tightly curled, stems full of thorns.” At her blank look he continued, “I have a uh a theory about eleven women and flowers. Not a fan? All right, I’ll think of something else… Nettle maybe? You’re spiky enough.”
She shot him an irritated look that only made him chuckle as she took the proffered pipe and took an experimental puff. And promptly spluttered.
She had never smoked from a pipe before and had made the mistake of inhaling. It left her coughing and wheezing with tears running down her eyes and earned a deep raspy laugh from the dwarf. He continued to laugh as he took the pipe back.
“Glad I amuse you” she grumbled finally when her eyes had stopped streaming, it only made him laugh harder. She and Varric traded insults stories back and forth as she set about looking for firewood. She even took a few more careful puffs from the pipe, being careful not to inhale as she tried to kindle a fire in the burnt out remains of the pit. She wasn’t doing a very good job and it was Solas who, with an elegant almost lazy movement of his wrist set fire to the damp wood and scrub she had collected.
She felt herself start at the casual use of magic. Magic unnerved her. Solas unnerved her. She had never before seen an elf that held himself in such a manner, so proud, arrogant even. His posture straight and defiant in the face of the Shems who would look down on him. He was like no elf she had ever met and he called to mind the tales of the wondering Dalish told around alienage fires of an evening. Those fabled legends of their mystical, magical brethren who fought against Shems and the Chantry edicts. Who would one day swoop in and save them all from a life of drudgery and oppression.
But he was not Dalish, quite the contrary. In the one conversation they had had prior to leaving Haven he had declared them little more than children clinging to fragments of a past they failed to understand. There had been anger there in his voice, an old wound perhaps and she felt she could grasp the secret of him if only she knew the right questions to ask. But he had deflected any further Dalish or anything really for that matter and they had not spoken much since they had left Haven.
He was fascinating and frustrating, evading all direct questions as skilfully as any Orlesian Bard. An utter mystery. Perhaps the most frustrating thing was that nobody else questioned it. They saw only a pair of knife ears and not the mystery of the man between them.
Since that first conversation in Haven she had watched him with a cautious curiosity and he regarded her in turn. It became a sort of dance in which they endlessly circled, trying to solve the mystery of one another without betraying secrets of their own.
She had been too disconcerted to sit by the magical fire, not that it truly looked magical but the means of its creation and indeed its creator was enough to kill her appetite. So she begged the need for sleep and sought her bedroll early falling into an uneasy slumber.
Her dreams were restless, had been since Haven, she dreamed of endless pursuit by an unknown enemy, of creatures with many eyes and of being chased across a blasted landscape. She awoke sometime before dawn; she had somehow twisted herself up in her blankets and felt trapped and claustrophobic. Needing air desperately crawled out of the small tent she shared with Varric into the cold dawn light. Varric was oblivious to her movements, not even a hitch in his snoring.
“Sleep well?” a voice asked. It made her jump before she realised it was Solas speaking. Sitting on the same log she had sat upon earlier, posture relaxed and staff balanced across his knees, he regarded her calmly across the remains of the campfire.
She felt a swell of irritation; his voice had been coolly neutral but surely was mocking her? He can’t have failed to hear the sounds of her tossing and turning even over Varric’s deep basal snoring. To hide the irritation on her face she stooped to fix her leggings, she regretted her earlier decision to leave them on as she slept, her dreams had left her feeling sticky and clammy and they clung awkwardly to her legs.
When her face was once more under control, she straightened and moved to sit across from him.
“If your dreams are causing you trouble, I may be able to help –“ he began but she cut him off with a curt shake of her head. She was being rude, she knew but something about Solas always left her on edge and she would do what she could to avoid as much magic as possible. As if she could, she thought glumly looking at the balled fist of her left hand on her lap. Emerald green light spilled out from the gap into the winters chill and she let the silence stretch and curl around her as she contemplated the mark and what it foretold for her. Death most probably. Whatever good fortune had kept her from death all these years had fled and Falon’Din was catching up to her.
“What happened to your ear?” Solas asked finally into the silence that had stretched longer than she realised the sky was lighter now and she could see it pinkening towards the east as the sun crested the horizon. She flinched at the question and her unmarked hand rose to the ear and the old scar there. She ran her fingers running over the thick wedge of scar tissue where the tip of her ear used to be. Her hair did well to hide it usually but she had braided it to sleep out of habit. She sorely that regretted now, it was foolish. If she lets loose one secret then another slip until her whole web was unravelled.
He was looking at her patiently as though he had an eternity to wait upon her answer.
She floundered a moment for an answer that wouldn’t give away too much “Never heard of a rabbit having its docked for not moving fast enough?”
She had said it in jest, her tone light but she watched him intently for any slip or trip. Anything that could give her more of a read on the man and to deflect the attention from herself. Solas didn’t reply, in their short time together he had proven himself adept at seeing through her lies and deflections and now was no exception. He simply waited for the truth.
“A Chevalier” She said as if that was all the explanation needed. Seeing the perplexed look on her face she continued. To think she had once prided herself on how well she guarded her tongue.
“It’s a.. I don’t know, a right of passage? They tumble them half drunk out of a carriage, into the slums with a short sword and orders to kill as many rabbits as they can. This one took pity on me I suppose. He took only the ear. An act of charity he called it.”
She could remember it as though it had happened yesterday. The stink of wine on the Chevalier’s breath, the taste of blood in her mouth as he casually backhanded her to quiet her struggling. “Hold still rabbit!” And then the pain.
She still been living on the streets then, begging for petit alms in the lower markets and sleeping in doorways. When she still held the foolish notion of bettering herself and fulfilling Philippe’s dreams. The ear had gotten infected unsurprisingly and she had paid a back street healer half a silver bit, all the money she had, to cauterise the wound.
The Shem must have been well into his cups or else a vindictive son-of-a-bitch because the poker he had used had slipped and left a mass of burnt skin the size of her palm on the her scalp. To this day it remained a puckered pink mess where no hair grew.
Such a profound look of pity and sorrow filled Solas’s face then. And was that guilt? No, she was imagining things.
“How old were you?” He asked.
“Ah... I don’t know...Twelve or thereabouts.” How long had she lived on the streets before some soul took pity on her and directed her to the alienage? She had no idea. At her answer his grip on his staff tightened, his knuckles turned white and he looked as though he wanted to dearly hit something.
“Bad enough they do this but that they would do this to a child?” his voice was a mixture of anger and disbelief and it she felt a stirring of alarm and complete incredulity. She had hated the Shem who had done this to her and before she had left for the Conclave she had found it difficult to be around any Shem without shaking with rage and a sense of injustice. But in truth she knew was lucky to have survived, she felt lucky. Most elves that tangled with Chevaliers ended up dead. But she had escaped, had escaped death more times than she cared to admit and not just before the events of the Conclave.
“Have you really spent no time in the cities?’ She asked trying to keep the incredulous tone out of her voice, it was the way of life there, however much one may hate it. An elf learnt to acclimatise quickly or they didn’t survive.
“No.” His shoulders slumped then, his anger evaporating leaving only sadness. “It has been some time since I have been in Val Royeaux... it was much different back then. I have… seen many things in my journeys through the Fade but it is another thing entirely to hear such things first hand.” Despite his casual mention of magic, she found her interest piqued.
“What made you start studying the face?’ She asked.
“I grew up in a village to the north. There was little to interest a man there, especially one gifted with magic but as I slept spirits of the Fade showed me glimpses of wonders I had never imagined. I treasured my dreams. Being awake out of the Fade became troublesome.”
“Did Spirits try to tempt you?” She was almost afraid to ask the question. Scared he would realise just how much he was giving away of himself but she was enthralled. They had never spoken this long before and she found herself equal parts fascinated and appalled at his words.
“No more so than a brightly coloured fruit is tempting you to eat.” She had a sudden vivid image of Solas biting into piece of fruit, the juices dripping down his chin and she felt her face redden at the thought.
“I learnt how to defend myself from more aggressive spirits and how to safely interact with the rest. I learnt how to control my dreams with full consciousness. There was so much I wanted to explore.” His voice had taken on a deep contemplative melancholy as he stared not at her but through her recalling memories she could not even begin to fathom.
“I gather you didn’t spend your entire life dreaming?” his gaze returned to her with her question, his gaze amused.
“No, eventually I was unable to find new areas in the fade.
“Why?”
“Two reasons, first the Fade reflects the world around us. Unless I travelled I was unable to find anything new. Second, the Fade reflects and is limited by our imaginations. To find interesting areas, one must be interesting.” He sounded so much like Philippe then, lecturing her on some simple aspect of mathematics that she had failed to understand the concept of the first time round.
“Is this why you joined the Inquisition?”
“I joined the Inquisition because we are all in terrible danger. If our enemies destroy the world, I would have nowhere to lay my head while dreaming of the Fade.”
What did one reply to such a statement? She would lay money on not even the greatest players of the Game knowing how to spin such a statement to their advantage.
“I wish you luck.” If her reply did not please him he made sign of it.
“Thank you. In truth, I have enjoyed experiencing more life to find more of the Fade.”
“How so?”
“You train to flick a dagger to its target. The grace with which you move is but a pleasing side benefit. You have chosen a path whose steps you do not dislike because it leads to a destination you enjoy. As have I.” She gave a small huff of laughter at his words and voice full of doubt she said.
“Are you’re implying that I’m graceful?” she asked failing to keep the humour and scepticism out of her voice. She was adequate with her blades at best; even she knew that. Were it not for Solas’s barriers, Varric at her back and Cassandra leading the charge she would have died for good at the temple.
“No, I was declaring it. It was not a subject for debate” at his words she felt her eyes go wide and flush creep up from the base of her neck to the tips of her ears. Was he flirting with her? His eyes met hers across the dying fire full of heat and the hint of a challenge.
No, surely not she thought as a traitorous heat filled her belly. It was a test surely, another one. Her mind strayed back to the first real conversation they had had in Haven, when he had mockingly declared her the Herald of Andraste sent to save them all. As if the bride of the Maker would send an elf to do her bidding, it had been laughable. She had answered him with humour and felt the unspoken approval and the start of his close scrutiny. Surely this was just another test?
She had been silent for too long, red faced and frozen as she perches awkwardly on the log. She hummed noncommittally in reply not trusting herself to do much else.
Desire and embarrassment and horror at the thought of an apostate flirting with her warred within her and she didn’t trust herself to speak without sounding like a fool or giving something away. His gaze softened then, pity and perhaps disappointment mingled in his voice when he spoke next, dismissing her.
“You should rest Alix. Whilst you still can. We are some way from the Crossroads and the journey will not be easy. There is still much ground to cover. Sleep while you can, I will keep watch.”
Feeling like an awkward bumbling teenage girl blushing at her first Springfest festival she stood and turned back to her tent. It had been some kind of test, she was sure of it, and she had failed miserably. So why was she still blushing?
As she lay down on her bedroll, head pillowed in her arms, Varric’s snoring a deep and steady rhythm next to her. She realised suddenly as she felt the first wave of sleep pull her under that she had never heard him say her name before; she liked the way it fell from his lips in that soft lilting accent. She anchored herself to the memory of it as she slipped blessedly dreamless sleep.