Chapter Text
“Can I take that, My Lady?” Blackwall gestures to her pack that holds the sack from Flissa.
She smiles at the simple gesture of care and hands it over with a nod and a murmured, “Thank you.” Once he has it, they cross to the bridge’s edge. She waves at the current guards and they snap a salute; Blackwall returns the salute with a formal tilt of his head, acknowledging the sign of respect from the younger soldiers. It makes her smile; there is nothing imperious in his manner when he does it, it is simply because he commands respect.
Once on the other side, they fall easily into step. She guides them along the road for a ways, moving toward the valley. “All of this was filled with wraiths; after Cassandra brought me out this way, I got my first good glimpse of the Breach, there” they turn a corner in the path and she points, “it was swirling and streaking out across the sky, with a ribbon of the Fade twining down to the Temple . . . or where the Temple was.”
Blackwall regards the view: the vibrant thrum of green in the sky, twisting in an ever revolving vortex of energy and the Veil. “Did you remember anything when you came out?”
She stands quietly looking at it next to him; “No,” she gestures and begins to climb further on the path, “I still don’t. I remember bits of my morning that day, I had been with my delegation and then had a meeting in the Temple. I think I got there, but I don’t remember much until I woke up in the Chantry in chains.” She looks down on the ground, watching her footing as they come to the bridge that is missing. Blackwall slings his shield to his back, puts the pack on the edge, and then jumps the 15 feet down to the rocks. He lands at the edge of the water; Dorothea remembers that this lake was frozen over the last time she was here. He smiles up at her, takes the pack from her hand and her staff, and then turns to look up at her. She smiles down at him and reaches out a hand to his, intending to use it steady herself so she can jump down. But Blackwall surprises her, reaches beyond her hand to her waist, gestures for her to fall into him. She slides her hands along his biceps and slips forward, feeling his hands press into the narrow dip of her waist.
His fingers are warm through her tunic and leathers, and she feels his shoulders tense and firm as he takes her weight onto his stance. Casually, he lowers her down to the edge of the water he stands in, careful to keep her boots out of the shallows. When her feet touch the pebbles of the shore, she stands a few inches taller than normal, and she considers the depths of his coal-black eyes. She lifts her left hand slowly to caress the beard along his jaw, but he arrests her motion, captures her hand with his own, and lifts her knuckles to his lips. “My Lady,” he husks, then he hands her her staff, re-shoulders the pack, and awaits her to take the lead.
Dorothea smiles and turns. She is not sure what just passed, but her mind spins to try to figure out how to get it to happen again. His voice breaks into her reverie as they fall into step again, side by side, down the path leading further into the valley, “Did you come to represent your Circle, or the City-State?”
She snaps to, blushes when she realizes she has been silently considering the prickle of the hair from his upper lip on her hand, wondering what the bristles of the hair in his beard would feel like under her fingers, imagining the feeling of it between her lips as she mouthed kisses into his jaw: “My Circle, of course, the governors would never have stood for a mage to represent them,” she snaps the answer, embarrassed.
He returns, “But you are gently born . . . ?” and the question is in the air, soft, an invitation to tell more about her; if he has noticed her harsh tone, he has chosen not to note it.
Grateful, Dorothea fills the gap, “Yes, I am the sole daughter of Bann Xavier Trevelyan, but I have three brothers, one who is nearly fifteen years my senior, my father’s first wife died in childbed,” she explains when she sees Blackwall’s head shift a questioning gaze to her. “It is said my father barely noticed her passing; theirs was a marriage of position and opportunity. My mother and father, though, were a marriage of love and desire.”
She leaves unsaid that her mother was simply a servant—a seamstress—hired to assist her father’s tailor. A sturdy, voluptuous brunette in her youth, her mother had aged into a beautiful, radiant woman who adored her father and made for them all a warm, safe home, including her step-brother. Her mother had doted on her, this lone girl child, helping her navigate the frightful formality and expectations of her father’s mother, an Orlesian heiress of a long blood line who had been the fourth daughter and thus sent to find a match across the Waking Sea. But Dorothea’s mother would do anything for her father, and that would come to include leaving her only daughter in a Circle Tower, cutoff from her family, from her new baby brother.
When she left for the Tower Dorothea could not have known that the first twelve years of her life had been the purest, warmest form of familial love; she also could not have fathomed the crushing weight of its absence once she was locked in a Tower.
“What of yourself?” She asks as they climb over a ridge, “We found you in Ferelden, but I do not think you grew up amongst the Dog Lords.” He laughs out loud, a slap of a sound that rings in her ear as a delight.
He rubs his hand along his jaw, chuckling, a smile lingering, “No, My Lady, I am not from Ferelden, I came out of Orlais many years ago to Ferelden, originally to the coast.”
“Where from in Orlais?” she asks.
“Truthfully, I was all over. I was a career soldier before I came to the Wardens; I lived in Val Royeaux for most of my time, but I would find myself stationed in various places, mainly in the south, although I’ve travelled north, too.”
His tone is still warm, but Dorothea senses a guard in his demeanor. She is no stranger to Warden tales—they had been some of her favorites in the Tower—and she knows that many leave behind some crime in their past, putting it aside to answer a calling to be saviors and champions. She doesn’t want Blackwall to believe she is prying, so she offers in exchange: “My grandmother, my father’s mother, was from Orlais, from Val Foret. She came to Ostwick as a young bride, although, if truth is to be told, she wasn’t that young,” she says, a sparkle in her eye as she catches Blackwall’s gaze, a smile on her lips as wide as the Nahashin River. “My grandmother had been promised to the Chantry, served as a Lay Sister, and was positioned to take Orders.”
“What happened?” he asks, curiosity in his tone.
“My grandfather; I mentioned he kept a fine stable, but he was also a very shrewd trader. He had a large stock of Rivaini Asaarash; he had brought in a stud and several mares, so the story goes, and set them up to breed. Their descendants were still alive when I was a girl: beautiful animals. Well, the Emperor wanted a team of four. So my grandmother’s father—he was influential at court—approached my grandfather to find his price: the price was my grandmother’s hand and her dowry.”
Blackwall hums his approval at the turn of events in her story, poses a question: “She would not have had one, would she? The Chantry would have already have had it, I would think?”
Dorothea laughs, delighted: “Yes! You see it; most people forget that part. Absolutely, my great-grandfather had already given her to the Chantry, but it was for the Emperor, so . . . the story goes the Emperor himself fronted the coin, and the linens in her trousseau were from the Cathedral in Val Royeaux.”
Blackwall laughs that bark of sound again and then descends into a chuckle vibrating out from his chest that makes her toes tingle. Dorothea swears to herself to spend her days finding ways to make this man make that sound. “That is quite a tale, My Lady.”
“It is,” she agrees simply and happily. “My grandmother was an expert at the Game; a good story, she would always say, was more than worth the cost of trouble to most people. If you could make the story interesting enough, she would tell me, then people would forgive you almost any transgression. They just want to believe and to be entertained.” She had not thought about her grandmother in years, burying the old woman in her mind with her mother, her father, her brothers when she went into the Tower; she hadn’t thought of her until the Conclave and meeting the Divine. “I often wondered how much of it was true. But it was her story, and you never argued with the Groβherzog.” Dorothea smiles in her memory of the older woman: learning how to sit through tea, raps on knuckles for clinking spoons, sugary treats for appropriate small talk. The thoughts are a blistering swirl of childhood longing and comforts in the green face of eldritch responsibility.
“Wise words, My Lady. She must have been quite a woman.” Blackwall murmurs softly, sensing the turn in Dorothea’s mood. They continue on for a while, walking in relative silence. Occasionally, Dorothea points out a building or a charred spot where the ground struggles to recover from the gore of demon blood.
It is a comfortable walk. They have not had this time together before, this ability to walk without the press of Varric’s running chatter or Solas’s cryptic observations on the Fade. Finally, the trees begin to thicken as they leave the outlying settlements and the forest closes in around the path that will lead on to the Temple. She halts their progress, remembering meeting the Chancellor for the first time ahead on the bridge that lies before them. Beyond the rise and fall of the terrain, the ruins will be there. The Breach in the sky is an oppressive presence, choking; now that she is here, she doesn’t remember why it seemed so important to bring him along, even to come herself.
She turns and gestures to the pack in his hand, “I asked Flissa to pack a light meal, but it seems a bit silly now, doesn’t it?” she laughs at herself, self-conscious and uncomfortable.
“It is a fine idea, My Lady,” Blackwall says gently into the breeze that lifts the hair from the back of her neck. “It would be quite a view from the bridge; I assume it is still safe? Shall we cross?” She nods and motions for him to lead the way.
Remnants of the barricades that the Chantry soldiers and the Templars had erected the day of the explosion still litter the bridge. While the tent the Chancellor used is long gone, the make-shift table is still there. Blackwall crosses to it and sets down the pack. He stands and looks up into the sky toward the Breach.
“Maker’s Breath, it seems impossible that such a thing could be so large and not swallow the entire world,” he exhales softly, staring up at the sky. Dorothea moves and stands next to him, her arm just brushing his, and stares up to the Breach. “A holy ground turned into a battlefield, and you just walked out of the middle of it.” Blackwall’s voice is quiet, a slight quiver of awe in his tone. Dorothea blushes, his quiet intent filling her with a sense of hesitation.
She blusters: “Yes, I made quite the entrance, as the Commander pointed out.” She tries to laugh, but bites off the chuckle with a note of bitterness. She senses Blackwall’s head shift and his eyes move over her profile. His arm shifts and she feels him lift her hand into both of his, tracing the pads of his thumbs over her knuckles, smoothing the skin as if he could soothe the anger out of her. As she begins to breathe deeply, watching him lift her hand to his lips and lay a gentle kiss there, she realizes that perhaps he can.
“I know what it is to be angry, My Lady,” he says quietly, regarding her hand. “It will fuel you a great distance, but it will eventually carve a hollow out of your belly.” He pauses and the silence engulfs her, making her ears ring.
She snorts and turns away toward the table, starts to unpack the pack, “So I shouldn’t be so angry?” she sends over her shoulder. She is hurt by the Warden’s casual dismissal; of course she is angry. This whole Maker-damned mess has trapped her, enslaved her, and sentenced her to death all in one, blinding, terrifying moment, and all because she had been in the wrong place at the wrong moment. It is like facing her Harrowing all over again . . . every damn day she wakes up.
She moves without regard for how she appears and slams things down onto the timbers of the table. Dimly she becomes aware that Blackwall has come to stand near her, watching her movements. He waits in silence, waits until she willingly allows him to capture her attention. Then he says, “Dorothea, you can be as angry as you want to be. You can rage against the Maker, the Chantry, the Circles, and anything in between, and I will still walk by your side. I will follow you into the Breach and never regret a moment of my life that brought me here,” he hesitates, and then continues, “Just know, though, that I offer you my life and that I will be here when that rage empties you out and leaves you hollow, if you have need of me.”
Stunned, Dorothea looks into his face. Devotion and dedication stare back at her, unwavering. She takes a slight step toward him and pulls her hand into his, the Mark pushing its light into his palm. She sees him swallow reflexively and she leans into his cheek. As she brushes a kiss high on his cheekbone the hairs of his beard tickle her lip and she smells the musk of his skin and the hair oil that he uses.
“Thank you, Gordon.” Her eyes shine with her gratitude and she hopes for a moment that he will pull her to him.
Abruptly, the man coughs. He squeezes her hand, drops it to fall to her side. “We are all here for you, My Lady,” he returns formally. He moves to open the bottle of stout and the moment dissolves into the wind over the railing.