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Herald’s Rest was nearly empty, this time of night.
Soldiers shuffled off to the night watch or to their beds. The bartender set mugs back under the counter, and stoppered jugs of wine. The music grew quieter, more sedate, meandering, bits and pieces of other melodies blending together into something almost hypnotizing.
After a long day of travel back from the Storm Coast, Blackwall should’ve been tired. He was tired, really, but it was a tired that buzzed behind his eyes like an insect. Ever since they’d returned, he had felt...unsettled.
There was no question why. He knew why. He’d clamped his damn mouth shut and let Tanith think, once again, that he was anything more than a coward with a stolen reputation. Unworthy of breathing the same air as her, let alone...well, any of the other things he allowed himself to think about in his weakest moments.
Blackwall sighed and lifted his half-empty mug to his lips.
“Shouldn’t you be asleep, broody beard?”
He glanced up at the words. Sera stood in front of the table, arms crossed, playful grin on her lips.
“Shouldn’t you?” He said.
“Can’t sleep with her singing that song all hours,” she cocked her head to the side. Sure enough, the soft strains of Maryden’s voice drifted up from the front of the tavern. “Never seen you here so late before.”
She slid into the seat beside him, plucking the ale from his hand before he could protest.
“Please, help yourself,” he grumbled toothlessly.
Sera grinned over the rim of the mug.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, letting the muffled song fill the space between them. Sera finished off his ale and slid the mug back in front of him, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.
“So,” she said, eyes sharp, darting over his face. “You’re all out of sorts. Why?”
“What?” He blinked.
“You. Ever since you got back, you’re all…” She waved her hands, fluttering her fingers, and wrinkled her nose at him. “Different.”
“Hmmm?”
“You know.” She gave him a stern look. “So what is it? You and her finally…” She waggled her eyebrows significantly.
“Maker, Sera…” he groaned.
“Hm. That bad?”
“No! It wasn’t…” he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Nothing happened, not really.”
“So why all the broody-face, then?”
He considered the question. It might have been the ale or the genuine note of concern in Sera’s voice, but whatever the reason, he found himself answering.
“I...don’t know what to do. Me and her, it’s...complicated,” he said.
Sera snorted.
“Doesn’t seem all that complicated. Not for her. Not for you, either. I’ve seen you making kissy eyes at each other all over the place.”
Well. She wasn’t wrong.
Tanith had hardly been subtle about what she wanted, even if the fact that she wanted him made no sense. How many times did he have to warn the woman off before she would do the right thing? How many times before he’d stop feeling that giddy little warmth in his chest when she kept trying anyways?
How could he make Sera understand why he was holding back when he was losing the will to fight it himself?
“I’m not good enough for her,” he tried anyways. “She deserves somebody…” He fumbled for the right word to encompass everything Tanith deserved. Lamely, he settled on “...better.”
Sera’s eyebrow arched. She leaned forward in her seat.
“Funny thing though, she seems to want you ,” she said. “You going on and on, blah blah blah I’m not right for you, it hasn’t worked so far, has it?”
“There are things she doesn’t...know, about me. If she did…”
“What, she’d toss you out on your arse?” Sera scoffed. “Don’t be stupid.”
Blackwall looked down at his mug. What would she do, if she knew? If he had told her? Would he be ordered out of the Inquisition? Dragged out of it in chains? Sent to the gallows? Perhaps. But it wasn’t the thought of death or banishment that kept him holding his tongue. That would be a relief, in a way.
It was her. It was all the little moments. When he called her “my lady”, a shield, a reminder of the difference in their stations, and she just gave him a look of fond exasperation. When he saw her from the window in the barn, making her way towards the stables, giving wary glances to the horses in passing but coming to see him anyways. When she spent the night in the hayloft, curled against him, her curls damp and sticking to his neck, skin warm, the smell of salt and fresh hay, her heartbeat steady in sleep.
And the way she looked at him sometimes. The way she looked at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, that wicked grin she often wore.
Three days ago he had seen her out in the garden. It’d been unusually warm. Sunny in that buttery sort of way that put everyone in a good mood. She’d been in her shirtsleeves, rolled up past her elbows. The fine muscles of her forearms flexed as she worked. He watched her laughing with one of the gardeners for a moment, ached with the way the sunlight caught in her curls. Then she turned, and caught sight of him leaning against the wall, and…
Maker, the way her face lit up put the sun to shame.
He could remember every detail. The gentle gleam in her eyes, the tilt of her chin, the freckle at the corner of her lips, the one he had struggled more than once not to lean forward and kiss. She was so beautiful it nearly brought him to his knees. He felt flayed open under her joyful gaze, bathed in her affection, and in that moment there was nothing in the world he would not have done to keep that smile on her lips for a second longer.
If he told her...all those moments would be tainted.
She would never look at him like that again, with the light of the world in her eyes. Never give him that teasing grin, never come to see him in the hayloft with a bottle of cider and trade words that toed the line between friendship and something more.
He would fall on his sword in an instant rather than cause her any pain. Just the thought of seeing that smile fall from her face, seeing the warmth in those eyes drain away, made his stomach clench.
No, he couldn’t tell her. Not yet. Selfishly, he wanted to keep that smile for a little while longer.
“Hey.” Sera’s voice and the finger jabbing into his shoulder shook him from his thoughts. “Where’d you go?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Just...thinking.”
“You do too much of that,” she said. “Thinking. You need to do things. Do her . Or don’t do her. But not all this…” she waved her hands vaguely. “ Thinking .”
“Sera, it’s--”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “ Complicated . Right. But it’s not, is it? You either do something, or you don’t. You made up your mind not to do anything?”
He frowned.
“I mean, I shouldn’t do anything, not--”
“Alright then. So you’re not doing anything,” Sera crossed her arms. “You’re letting her go, you’re letting her find some other pouty beardy bloke, letting her get married, have little beardy elfy children and all. That right?”
Blackwall’s hand tightened a little around the empty mug.
“That’s...that’s right.”
“Then you stop. Stop making your kissy eyes. No more fancy courting, no more sighing, none of it. Not fair to her, is it?” Sera’s blue eyes flickered across his face, sharp, searching for something. “You carrying on like all that, her thinking it means something when it doesn’t. Not fair.”
Blackwall considered this. It made sense. It would be the fairest thing to her.
But he had already tried that, hadn’t he? Tried keeping his distance. It was useless. He might as well try tearing his heart out.
“I don’t think I can just...stop,” he admitted, glancing away from Sera’s piercing gaze. “It does mean something. To me.”
Sera threw up her hands.
“So friggin’ do things! Can’t sit here all broody forever, can you?” She let out a frustrated huff, shifting to a crouch in her seat. “Most people wouldn’t be all--” Here she gestured to him as if that alone should make her point. “Like this over a fit woman making eyes at them. The things she does for you. The way she just... cares about you. All out in the open. Not everyone is like that.”
Blackwall couldn’t help a small smile at her words.
“And here I thought you didn’t like her.”
Sera crossed her arms and sniffed.
“Well. She’s not a bad sort, once you get past…” She wiggled her hands over her face. “The elfiness. You know. She listens, she cares. She likes you.”
The laugh was startled from his lips.
“What, and that’s a virtue, now? Being foolish enough to take a fancy to--”
“ Yes, ” Sera said. He fell silent, stunned by the fierceness of her voice. “You’re worth a hundred of those noble pricks she deals with every day.”
With anyone else, he would’ve laughed the comment off. But praise like this from Sera was something rare and precious. Hard-earned.
He leaned over, bumping his shoulder against hers.
“Same to you, Sera.”
“Yeah, well.” Her mouth performed some odd contortions that meant she was holding back a smile. “That’s not the point, is it? Point is, you make a choice. You have to. You stop this now, or you move forward. Can’t stand still forever, can you?”
Blackwall frowned. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Not after all these months.
But then, Sera wasn’t wrong, either. He couldn’t stand still forever, pining like this. Something had to give.
“You’re pretty smart, Sera, you know that?” He clapped her on the back, unable to keep the affection from his voice.
She snorted and shoved his shoulder, but he didn’t miss the pleased little grin she was sporting.
“Leave off,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be going to see your woman now?”
Blackwall chewed his cheek.
“Maybe I should.”
Sera nodded approvingly.
“You do that.” She reached over and ruffled his hair before standing. “Give yourself a chance, yeah? Could be good.”
She left him sitting at his table, heart racing.
Could be good . He allowed himself, for just a moment, to let hope trickle its way into his heart. It could be good. And good or not, he couldn’t do this much longer.
He rose from his chair, ignoring the sudden tremble in his hands.
It was time to find Tanith. She deserved a choice, a path forward. She had his heart already. It was up to her what she would do with it.