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Sera’s watching the training yard from high up on the battlements of Skyhold. Cullen’s yelling at the troops again. As if they haven’t been training day and night for the attack on Coryphemus’s forces in the Arbor Wilds. It’s time to give the troops a break.
A soldier moves to a previously unused dummy and pummels it with their sword. The dummy erupts in a swarm of bees. (How Sera got that beehive in the dummy, she can’t really remember, but it was brilliant.)
The soldiers scatter, crying out. Cullen roars “Sera!” as he glares around for her, so Sera ducks down to peek from the battlements instead of standing in full view.
One of the soldiers trips and falls. Sera giggles. She feels bad, but it is a little funny. She’ll toss ‘em one of the healing potions she’s got tied around her waist to make up for the bee stings.
Cullen grabs a messenger, says something to him, and the messenger bolts up the stairs into the great hall. Cullen grabs the fallen soldier and swings them up so he’s carrying them on his shoulders.
Sera’s stomach drops and freezes. They can’t stand? What’s going on?
Cullen takes the stairs three at a time as he runs into the armory, slamming the door behind him.
The messenger brings back two mages: someone Sera doesn’t know, and Vivienne. At a word from one of the watching soldiers, Vivienne runs to the armory. Vivi has healing magic, Sera remembers suddenly. No. Nonononono….
She starts running for the armory too.
The second mage sends a sudden wave of fire out across the training yard, the flames twice the height of Iron Bull. Most of the bees get roasted instantly. Some patches of grass smoulder on the outside of the training yard, but the mage puts them out with blasts of ice.
Sera bolts across the courtyard and makes it into the armory. Flanked by Vivienne and Cullen, the soldier is crouched over in a chair. Their helmet’s off: she’s a young elven woman with her brown hair shaved close her skull. Sera knows her face from around Skyhold’s Shadow, the village that sprang up below Skyhold where the soldiers have their tents and the common people go to drink and dice. Sera can’t remember her name.
The soldier’s light brown skin is slick with sweat. She’s inhaling and exhaling deeply. “Thank you,” she says to Vivienne. “My throat was closed shut. Thank you so much.”
Vivienne squeezes her shoulder. “Of course, my dear.” She glances at Sera, her cold gaze making Sera feel two inches tall. “I’m just sorry Sera’s idiotic prank made it necessary.”
The elven woman blinks at Sera. She says a quiet, neutral, “Oh.”
“I’m so sorry—” Sera begins.
Cullen blocks Sera’s view of the soldier, his cheeks blazing pink. She’s seen him fight, but she hasn’t seen him this mad, ever. “Get. Out.”
“I…I got a healing potion—"
“Get out!”
Sera scarpers. What else can she say? Her heart’s racing too fast. She can’t think.
There’s twelve or fifteen or so soldiers outside the armory. Those that have helmets off are all creased brows and wet eyes and pursed lips. Her regiment, probably.
“Is Zin okay?” an older man asks. His armor’s slightly different—a captain, maybe?
“Yeah,” Sera stammers. “Vivi fixed her up. She’s…yeah.” Her mouth has gone dry and sour.
“I’ll go tell the others,” one of the soldiers says before jogging off.
And that’s twelve to fifteen people staring at the woman who almost killed their friend. Most of them look away. Of course, I’m the Inquisitor’s lover. Can’t call me out to my face, can they? A few of them glare. The glares make her feel ill, make her face heat with shame and her palms get all wet. But that’s as it should be.
“I didn’t know bees could do that,” she tries to explain. It comes out in a ragged whisper. “Bees hurt, sure, but a little salve and the stings’re good. That’s…that’s what I thought. Thought you’d get the day off and you could relax.”
“Some people have a deadly reaction to bee stings,” the older man explains. “When she enlisted, Zinara told me she’d had bad experiences with bees, as she’d heard of the unconventional weaponry used by the Inquisition. I told the commander, and we haven’t been on a battlefield with your bee potions since.
“But, clearly,” he sniffs disapprovingly, “you weren’t informed.”
“Um. No. Frig. I’m—I’m sorry.”
There’s a pause that stretches a year and a day.
“Well…it all worked out, I s’pose,” one of the soldiers says uneasily.
What am I doing here? Sera realizes. I can’t spew my frigging feelings at them. Gotta leave ‘em in their own.
Sera leaves without another word. It feels like the whole courtyard is looking at her. In a daze, her feet turn to Adder’s room.
There’s Varric, chatting with the mage who sent that fireball that killed the bees. Of course, the messenger who grabbed Vivi must’ve run right past him, and Varric’s always there to sniff out a story. They both glance at Sera as she walks up the steps to the great hall.
I’m sorry, she wants to tell Varric. Pranks are supposed to be silly shite. Not deadly. When a Red Jenny job puckers around you, that’s not fun, but it happens. You stand up for the little people, you start kicking shit or sticking arrows, and sometimes you get smacked down. That’s life. But pranks were different. Sera hadn’t realized how different until just now.
All her sorries and sadness mean piss all, though. A soldier almost died. Someone who’d done nothing wrong.
She turns away from Varric and keeps going. Adder’s room seems so far away. Will she ever go drinking with the troops again? Will anybody ever trust her?
When she gets into Adder’s chambers, the Qunari is lying on her couch, reading a book. She looks up, smiling, when Sera enters.
Her smile drops when she takes Sera in. “What’s wrong, love?”
“Um. I think we need to make ‘Sorry I Almost Killed You’ cookies.”
Adder recoils in surprise, then gestures for Sera to sit. “Explain, please.”
Sera doesn’t make ‘Sorry I Almost Killed You’ cookies. That was a frigging stupid idea.
Inquisitor Adaar offers Zinara Irin, private of the 12th regiment, an official apology within the half-hour. She goes down and talks to the troops and everything.
Sera doesn’t come, of course. She doesn’t ask what Adder’s going to say, but she can imagine. “I’ll keep the stupid bitch in line. Not sure why I’m still in love with her, really. She’s pretty shite.” That’s what Sera would say.
Sera stays in Adder’s chambers. She sends a note to Leliana, asking if one of her people can look into everyday things that can kill people. One of the Red Jennies Sera ran with in Val Royeaux couldn’t eat nuts without getting hives. Can eating nuts kill people? Maker, she’s released so many spiders into people’s drawers. Can spider bites kill some people?
In her message to Leliana, Sera doodles a blazing pyre with people crying around it. She’s been to a few funerals in her day. There was a lot of getting drunk after.
A list of everything, she repeats again, underlining it a few times.
She asks the guards to grab a messenger, sends the message, then sits on the couch, watching the fire burn down. She can’t make herself move to put more wood on it. Soon it’s just orange embers.
Leliana’s response is prompt. You’ll have it by the end of the day, she writes. No guilt-trip, which surprises Sera. She figured all Addie’s advisors hate her a little, with all the time Adder spends with her that she could be spending on Big, Important Things that they like to go on about. She figured they’d love a chance to rub her mistakes in her face.
Adder returns a few hours later. The fire’s gone out now. She kisses Sera on the temple before grabbing a tinderbox and some wood for the fire.
“It went as well as it could, I think,” Adder comments as she lays the wood in the fireplace. “Sometimes, accidents happen due to a lack of information, especially in an organization as big as this.” She crouches down and sparks the tinderbox. “Cullen talked with me after. Part of him thinks it’s his fault for not sharing the bee thing with you. I told him it wasn’t.” The fire catches on a particularly big piece of wood. “Now you know that bees can be deadly, and you won’t use them in pranks again.”
Sera doesn’t say anything. Adder sits down beside her and pulls her into a cuddle. Tries to, anyway. Sera sits stiff. She can’t melt against Addie’s body like she normally does.
“There’s more I can do,” Sera realizes. “There’s a lot more.”
Leliana’s as good as her word. Sera gets her list by the end of the day—three copies, in fact. The list is longer than she thought. She folds one copy up and keeps it in her bra, so she can take it out quickly if she gets a prank idea and check against it. She puts the other one in her room, for when she loses the one in her bra. The third, she gives to Adder. She doesn’t lose shite.
Sera writes a letter to their bee supplier: The Inquisition doesn’t need anymore bees.
Adder glances over her shoulder as she writes. “Hmm. If he wants to sell us honey, though, I’m game. I’d hate to burn bridges with the guy who thought up ‘bee potions.’”
Adder could always see five steps ahead of Sera. “Brilliant!” We require honey, she writes. She passes the letter on to Josie’s people to fill in the details.
The next day, Sera and Adder ride out. As they walk to the stables, it still feels like everyone’s watching Sera, but that’s on her, isn’t it? She’ll have to prove herself and do better.
They ride out with potion bottles full of bees. Adder keeps trying to cheer Sera up with funny stories from her merc days. She tried to shag Sera this morning, but for once, Sera wasn’t interested.
When they reach a clearing, they unstopper the potion bottles and let the bees go. Since they didn’t shake the potion or startle the bees, they’re not driven mad. They just fly about, trying to figure out where they are and how they can get food, probably.
“Bye, bees,” Adder calls out.
Sera eyes her. “They’re just bees, Addie. No need to treat ‘em like they’re people.”
“I like ‘em. Whenever I threw a bee potion, I thought of you. It made me smile. Well, also, the screaming and flailing was pretty funny.”
Adder’s smile becomes a wince. Sera crosses her arms over her stomach and stares at the ground.
“Not quite so funny now,” Adder says quietly.
They stand in silence, bee-watching. After a while, Adder grabs Sera’s hand and squeezes it. Reluctantly, Sera squeezes back.
“Good thing being best friends with Cullen was never something I cared for,” Sera comments. “Not gonna happen now. Do they all hate me, do you think?”
“Oh, I imagine not everyone’s happy. But how can I punish you? Kick you out of the Inquisition?”
“Not shag me, I guess.”
“Hey, that’s just punishing me, and I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You could tell me no more pranks,” Sera says, an idea forming as she talks. “Make it official-like.”
Adder snickers. “Right. Because telling you not to do something isn’t the surest way to make sure you do it.”
“No, it is.”
“That’s what I…never mind.”
“I mean, it is normally. But if you give me an order as the Inquisitor, I’d obey it. Because…maybe I just lost my taste for pranking for a time. Can’t see myself going back to it right away. So tell me I can’t prank. And then tell everyone else you told me. And then I’ll curse and swear, like you’re stopping me from doin’ fun shite. But, really, you’re just stopping me from being a shithead who almost killed someone who wasn’t doing anything wrong, who—” A lump is forming in her throat. She coughs, looking away. She focuses, real hard, on one particular bee flying overhead, so she doesn’t cry.
“Hey,” Adder says. She steps in front of Sera, holding both her hands now. “You apologized and you’re learning from it. What else can you do?”
“I know. But just lemme feel like shit for a bit, okay? I need to. And tell me I can’t prank.”
Adder kisses her forehead. “All right. I’ll write out an official decree. Nail it to your door and everything.”
Sera chuckles. “Thanks.” She hugs her, this amazing woman she loves who, weirdly, keeps loving her no matter what she does. Adder hugs her back, squeezing her tightly, mashing her face against her massive tits.
Tits like those deserve to be in Sera’s hands. Now. “We ever done it in a swarm of bees?” Sera asks.
Adder glances around. “Er, bee stings, though?”
They’ve both been stung before, and nobody died from those stings. “Aw, c’mon. Live a little.” Sera slaps her arse.
Adder grins. “All right. Sex in a swarm of bees it is.”