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They don't get along.
Lady Lavellan is angry, and in truth a part of Cassandra can understand it. She didn't see at first, beneath the violent blood writing on her face and the hostile edge to her voice, but Andraste's Herald is young. Cassandra remembers all too well what she was like when she allowed anger to rule her...indeed, though she likes to pretend she has moved past those days, sometimes she isn't so certain.
Wasn't she all too willing to hold a blade at the Herald's throat not a few days prior?
They don't get along, but perhaps it's partially Cassandra's fault. Understanding and diplomacy have never been her strong suits. She's more of a strike first, ask questions later sort of a person. She resolves at least once per day to be kinder, or at least to endeavour to think before she speaks.
Her dreams since the explosion have not been kind to her. She seldom manages any sleep at all, and always wakes sometime before dawn in a cold sweat, reaching out for people who are no longer alive.
Normally she finds it charming that Skyhold is chilly at night—it's almost never cold in Orlais—but tonight she feels the chill all the way down to her bones, and she shivers despite her heavy cloak. She feels strange and small here against the ancient fortress and its background of foreboding mountains, and not unlike a child, sneaking into the kitchens at night because of a bad dream.
Perhaps it's her preoccupation that allows her to be caught off her guard.
"Oh," she utters before she can catch herself.
Lady Lavellan is sitting on a little stool by the chopping block in the center of the room, illuminated by the light from the stove. She's resting her head in one hand, and she has a teacup and a cookie on the chopping block at her side, both untouched. She looks up sharply.
"I'm sorry," says Cassandra. "You startled me."
At first it seemed like Lavellan was always frowning, the way her blood writing looks. Learning to tell the difference has done little to assuage Cassandra's unease.
"You couldn't sleep?" she tries.
Lavellan shrugs.
Cassandra averts her eyes, sets about pouring the tea she's come for. She considers just making her tea and leaving in silence, but her room is cold and her bedroll isn't particularly comfortable. She was hoping to bask in the warmth of the kitchen stove for awhile before she revisited the notion of sleep.
She stirs her tea in silence a moment, then takes a leap. "I was...thinking about my brother," she says hesitantly. "How we used to sneak into the kitchens for a midnight snack. After he..." the words almost fall from her lips without her permission, too easy, still just as painful. "Well, it has never held the same appeal alone."
When she turns around, Lavellan is looking at her. Not frowning, just looking, though the light from the stove casts frightful shadows across her face.
"Do you have family waiting for you, back home?" Cassandra dares.
"Not really," says Lavellan quietly, without even blinking.
"Oh." Cassandra focuses her attention on her tea a moment, on settling herself upon the stool across from their strange Herald. "Forgive me, if it is a difficult subject, but...you are Lady Lavellan, and your clan is called Lavellan. I...?"
Lavellan focuses her attention on her own teacup, but she just gives it a lacklustre stir. "You thought all clans were related?" she wonders, with an edge to her tone that sets Cassandra on her guard. But when Lavellan looks up again, she is smiling.
"I—" Cassandra stammers again, and when the revelation of what she's assumed washes over her, she covers her face in embarrassment. "Oh, Maker," she breathes. "That wouldn't make much sense, would it?"
Lavellan laughs, a low, quiet chuckle, and the sound is sharp, but it is also warm. When Cassandra uncovers her face, Lavellan continues. "To answer your question, my mother died in childbirth, as did her mother before her. I never knew my father, either—I'm told he caught the Blight sickness on a hunt."
"I'm sorry," says Cassandra.
Lavellan shrugs. "I never knew them, so there's nothing to miss."
Cassandra frowns thoughtfully and takes a sip of her tea while she thinks. "I can understand that," she says. "I suppose I even feel the same way."
"You lost your family, as well?"
Cassandra nods. "I miss my brother because I knew him well. My parents are..." she shakes her head. "There is a way you are meant to feel, but how can I feel it when I never knew them?"
Lavellan nods thoughtfully, looks at Cassandra so intently that she feels studied. Then her brow does furrow, just slightly, beneath the angry blood writing upon her face, and she takes up the cookie that's been sitting untouched in front of her. She breaks it in half and offers one half across the chopping block to Cassandra.
Cassandra glances from her offering to her face and back again before she gathers the wherewithal to accept it.
"Thank you," she manages, belated and breathless.
Lavellan nods and raises her half of the cookie in a toast. "I don't know much about family," she says after a moment's silence. "But I think you're onto something. I think it's more about the people you choose..." she inhales as though she's going to say something else, frowns and averts her eyes, then glances back up, almost shyly. "And the people who choose you back."
For the first time since the Conclave, or perhaps a great while longer, Cassandra feels herself beginning to smile.